Analysis Of Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard

Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard is her third book of poems that she dedicated to her African-American mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough. The title, Native Guard, is a reference to a regiment of African-American soldiers, both freed slaves and others who enlisted with the Confederate army. This regiment fought for the Union during the Civil War, standing guard on Ship Island to ensure that Confederate war prisoners did not escape. Light is a reoccurring image through out the entire collection, but it is very well used in “Blond.” In “Blond,” the usage of light is portrayed to the reader in a similar manner as the rest of the collection, but it evokes a different theme. The speaker is examining a photo of her childhood that brings her back to that moment and feeling. The poem begins with the …show more content…
She was a biracial child, African-American and caucasian, being given a blond wig. The adult speaker looking back explains, “I didn’t know to ask, nor that it mattered, if there’d been a brown version.” She also tells that this was “years before I’d understand it as primer for a Mississippi childhood.” In the moment, the child was distracted by her ignorant nature, being playful and unaware. It took maturing through a difficult childhood in her skin to be able to look back to that moment in a different light. She goes on to wonder while observing the photo, “the child that chance, the long odds, might have brought.” Additionally, she imagines the other possibilities of her genetics if they had combined different ways, “Certainly it was possible — somewhere in my parents’ genes the recessive traits that might have given me a different look… I could have passed for white.” Her life could have been completely different, perhaps easier with lighter skin tone. People of the south are too unforgiving of a person that is