Native Guard
The title of Natasha Trethewey’s Pulitzer Prize-
winning collectionNative Guard(2006) references
a regiment of African American soldiers, some of
whom were freed slaves, others of whom had
enlisted with the Confederate army but had ulti-
mately escaped the rule of white Southerners.
This special regiment fought for the Union
army during the Civil War, standing guard on
Ship Island, off the Mississippi shore, to ensure
that Confederate prisoners did not escape.
The title poem of the collection is told in the
voice of one of the black soldiers, a freed slave
who sees similarity between his role as a soldier
and that of a slave. The work is manual labor,
just like before, and the rations are also very
familiar. The soldier recounts the passage of
time as he records his thoughts in a journal-like
poem. The poem laments the loss of life, dignity,
and freedom. At one point, the poem points out
that everyone is a slave to destiny.Author Biography
Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mis-
sissippi, in 1966 to a white father and a black
mother. Her father, Eric Trethewey, a poet, and
her mother, Gwendolyn Grimmette, a social
worker, divorced when Trethewey was six years
old. She and her mother then moved to Georgia,
where her mother earned a master’s degree and182
NATASHA TRETHEWEY
2006