Before I was ever a poet, my father was writing poems about me, so it was a turning of the tables when I became a poet and started answering, speaking back to his poems in ways that I had not before.
Natasha TretheweyRead
For a long time, I've been interested in cultural memory and historical erasure.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Cultural memory shapes our identity, and its absence can lead to gaps in understanding our history.
In this quote, Natasha Trethewey speaks to the significance of cultural memory and the consequences of historical erasure. She implies that our understanding of identity and heritage is deeply tied to the memories and narratives we preserve or forget, highlighting the importance of acknowledging and honoring diverse histories to foster a more inclusive understanding of the past.
Themes
Cultural MemoryHistorical ErasureIdentityHistoryNarratives
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on social justice, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of preserving diverse histories.
More from Natasha Trethewey
All quotes βI've been telling my students, 'Imitate, imitate.' And they say, 'Well, what if I plagiarize, or what if I'm not original? I want to be myself.' And I always tell them, 'Your self will shine through'... If you allow yourself to feel deeply and honestly, what you say won't be like anyone else.
Natasha TretheweyRead
I think that it's hard enough being an adolescent and wanting so much to fit in with your peers, your schoolmates, and to erase any sign of difference, to be part of the group. And being biracial but also being black in a predominately white school marked me as different.
Natasha TretheweyRead
'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but also in our political decisions.
Natasha TretheweyRead
Often as a poet I find that I am somewhat outside an experience I want to hold onto, consciously taking mental notes or writing them down in my journal - for fear that I will forget. It's not unlike being on a trip and taking pictures, your face behind a camera the whole time - the entire experience mediated by a lens.
Natasha TretheweyRead
People always want to be on the right side of history; it is a lot easier to say, 'What an atrocity that was' then it is to say, 'What an atrocity this is.'
Natasha TretheweyRead
Similar quotes
I never thought I'd see the day that I would see white folks as frightened, or more so, than black folks was during the civil rights movement when we was in Mississippi.
Dick GregoryRead
When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact⦠I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915.
Henry Morgenthau, Sr.Read
No big modern war has been won without preponderant sea power; and, conversely, very few rebellions of maritime provinces have succeeded without acquiring sea power.
Samuel Eliot MorisonRead
The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
John Le CarreRead
Reconstruction is the great black hole that remains to be filled. Even experts on the Civil War don't really understand its full significance.
Ron ChernowRead
I was probably unusually close to my parents, so I do what I can now to preserve the integrity of their memory. The Holocaust deserves to be remembered.
Norman FinkelsteinRead