Natasha Trethewey Analysis

Natasha Trethewey is a contemporary poet and is currently the Poet Laureate of Mississippi (Biography of Natasha Trethewey). She was actually born in Mississippi in 1966 on April 26th. Her birthdate is influential in her writing because she was born 100 years after the Confederate Memorial Day, thus, being interested in writing about the Civil War in poems. Another popular topic in her poems is race. Her mother was African American and her father was white. At this time, interracial marriages were illegal and there was still a lot of tension between races. Her parents divorced when she was six years old and her mother remarried. However, her mother divorced this man too, and he murdered her, all while Trethewey was 19. This shaped her life

The title white lies is used in two ways. The first way is the dictionary definition, the speaker is telling small and harmless lies. The second way is more figurative and the speaker her lying about being fully white. The first stanza also uses vivid imagery to contrast the idea of “white” lies with lines such as “light-bright, near white,/ high-yellow, red bonded” (3-4) and “in a black place” (4). The use of colors provides readers a picture in their mind and the colors contrast the word “white” in the title. This shows that Trethewey took a lot of time to think about words to use in not only the poem, but the title. She sets up the speaker’s dilemma of being “near-white” (3). The speaker is mixed race and looks white. This allows the speaker to forget about her African American side and embrace her white side. This is similar to Trethewey because she is also mixed race but is able to fool others into thinking she is white because of her paleness to her skin. This is the first reason I believe the speaker and author are the same person. The second stanza continues the use of imagery with colors and discusses the white lies the speaker