Native Guard

Mixed Feelings

By: Olivia McGrory

Native Guard by Natasha Tretheway is a book of Poems that addresses the history of the south during the civil war, and also features the author’s personal history, such as her mother’s death and her parents illegal interracial marriage. Tretheway was a bi-racial woman in the south during the 1960s when interracial marriages were still extremely looked down upon, and she discusses the impact this inequality had on her life. A couple of the main themes throughout the series of poems are self-identity and racism. Part III most effectively conveys these themes because of the speaker’s use of literary references, repetition and symbols.

In the poem “Miscegenation”, Trethteway uses a reference to a character named Joe Christmas, who is featured in one of William Faulkner’s famous novels, Light in August. William Faulkner, like Tretheway, grew up in the state of Mississippi. Faulker is a very well respected writer that focuses a lot of his pieces on Southern culture. The novel, Light in August, takes places during the 1930s, which was an era when the Jim Crow laws were passed and racial segregation was legalized. Tretheway makes a comparison to this era of segregation, even though this was a while before her time because this type of hostility was still present in the south when she was growing up. Joe Christmas is similar to Tretheway in the sense that they are both bi-racial and confused about their self-identity. Joe Christmas received his name because he was orphan that was taken in on Christmas day and similarly Tretheway’s first name Natasha means “Christmas Child” (Tretheway ln 14). Although Tretheway knows more about her racial background than Joe Christmas, she is still confused about how she fits into society and which race she identifies with. Tretheway also makes reference to another well-known literary piece called War and Peace. Tretheway states “My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name”...