Race
Race is the central theme of almost all of Trethewey's work. While she approaches it in different contexts, she is frequently examining the relationship between the lives of individuals and the overarching forces of structural racism. In the poem "History Lesson," she describes a photograph of her as a child, recounting a day she spent at the beach. She renders the scene with sparkling clarity, remembering the sight of minnows "glinting like switchblades" in the water and her toes curling "around wet sand." But in the second half, the poem shifts dramatically as she recalls the segregation laws of the time: "I am alone / except for my grandmother, other side / of the camera, / telling me how to pose. / It is 1970, two years after they opened / the rest of this beach to us, / forty years since the photograph / where she stood on a narrow plot / of sand marked colored." She shows the proximity of her childhood memories to the unjust laws that her grandmother had to endure. In doing so, she reveals how pervasive these racist power structures were, and how they fundamentally impacted the lives of ordinary people. Trethewey's poetry often deals with the far-reaching consequences of these societal issues.
Trethewey also often writes about characters with mixed ethnicities. As a biracial individual herself, Trethewey describes the in-betweenness often experienced by people who do not fit into obvious categories. In the poem "Flounder," she remembers a comment made by her aunt while they were fishing: "Here, she said, put this on your head. / She handed me a hat. / You ’bout as white as your dad, / and you gone stay like that." Her aunt's desire to make sure she does not tan reveals the societal preference for lighter skin and emphasizes how her father's genes impacted her appearance. Later, when her aunt catches a flounder, she comments on the different colored sides: "A flounder, she said, and you can tell / ’cause one of its sides is black. / The other side is white, she said." While the comment is offered as an explanation, it also seems to summarize Trethewey's situation, as she carries two identities within her, and is continually asked to juggle them. Her work often examines moments like this, showing mixed-race individuals as they struggle to conform to the norms of a society that does not accept or understand their existence.
History
One of the other major themes in Trethewey's work is history. As she writes often, stories need to be recorded and told to be passed down through generations. This is particularly important to her poems, as she is often writing about Black individuals whose stories are overlooked or erased in history texts. This is a central theme in her poem "Native Guard." As the speaker of the poem says in the final sonnet of the sequence, "all the dead letters, unanswered; / untold stories of those that time will render / mute. Beneath battlefields, green again, the dead molder—a scaffolding of bone / we tread upon, forgetting. Truth be told." After describing the thankless sacrifices made by Black soldiers in the Union Army, the speaker notes how easily their stories will be forgotten. As battlefields turn "green again," the "untold stories" of these men will be buried with their bones, forgotten. Here, as she often does, Trethewey is commenting on the importance of history, particularly in terms of making sure that marginalized voices are given the historical weight they deserve. In her writing, she suggests that the past cannot be reckoned with if we do not tell the full story.
Work
Work is also an important theme in Trethewey's poetry. This can take many forms, but her poems often focus on scenes of intensive labor, either in the home or out in the world. In "Housekeeping," the speakers describe the painstaking effort they put into salvaging and repairing things around their home: "We mourn the broken things, chair legs / wrenched from their seats, chipped plates, / the threadbare clothes. We work the magic / of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes." By focusing on these specific details, Trethewey creates a fuller portrait of the work, assigning it dignity and importance. This is particularly important as these "housekeeping" efforts would commonly be dismissed as "women's work," but here she reclaims their importance by making them the subject of a poem. This theme often reappears in Trethewey's writing, as she is concerned with giving credit to traditionally unacknowledged or unappreciated communities and individuals.
Memory
Another central theme in Trethewey's writing is memory. Her poems commonly feature characters who are somehow caught in the thrall of a memory, unable to let it go or move on. This is particularly evident in the poem, "Myth," where she retells the story of Orpheus. In this text, she shows Orpheus still reeling from the loss of Eurydice, his lover whom he failed to save from the underworld. Each morning he wakes up to find that she is not by his side. He describes this moment in the following way: "Sleep-heavy, turning, / my eyes open, I find you do not follow. / Again and again, this constant forsaking." He refers to this recurring pain as "constant forsaking," because he is trapped in the moment he lost her, unable to escape this memory. Trethewey often looks at her characters' difficult relationships with the past, as their memories prove too painful to recognize, but too difficult to dismiss.
Photography
Another major theme in Trethewey's work is photography. All of the poems in Bellocq's Ophelia describe various portraits of prostitutes in New Orleans which were taken in the early 1900s by photographer E.J. Bellocq. She not only describes the women in the portraits, but uses their point of view to also describe, and question, Bellocq's process. The speaker of one of these poems notes the fragility of her body in these pictures: "Bellocq thinks I’m right for the camera, keeps / coming to my room. These plates are fragile, / he says, showing me how easy it is / to shatter this image of myself, how / a quick scratch carves a scar across my chest." The unsettling quality of this description derives from the fact that Bellocq shows so much control over her image. The damage he does to the picture feels, to the reader, like it can somehow cause real harm to the narrator. She reveals the power inherent to these portraits, as Bellocq is the only one who can make or destroy her image. In these works, and others, Trethewey uses the theme of photography to show how a portrait is constructed and the power the artist holds over the subject.
Fear
Related to the theme of race, fear is also a prominent thread in much of Trethewey's work. She often explores the feelings of terror experienced by Black communities throughout history. This is featured prominently in the poem "Incident," which retells the story of a Klan cross burning that occurred in a small town. The speakers of the poem unnervingly capture the atmosphere of pervasive fear during this scene. They paint a disturbing picture of this moment: "At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree, / a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns. / We darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps, / the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil." The emotion of the story is palpable, as the speakers turn off their lights and silently watch the men dressed in white gather around the cross. The fear that they experience is not solely from a frightening sight, but from the historical awareness of the danger these men present to their safety.
Family
Family is an important theme in many of Trethewey's poems. She often writes about the racial dynamics within her own family, describing the complexities of having a white father and Black mother. In "Enlightenment," she writes about an ongoing debate she had with her father about Thomas Jefferson. She says they disagreed about whether his personal shortcomings ruined his legacy as a political theorist and president. At the end of the poem, after making a joke about the remarks of a tour guide, Trethewey notes some degree of resolution between them: "I've made a joke of it, this history / that links us — white father, black daughter — / even as it renders us other to each other." She is comfortable enough to laugh at this disagreement between them, but still notes that they live on opposite sides of a racial divide. Trethewey frequently examines complex family dynamics like this one, showing the strength of a bond while commenting on the difficulties within it.
