Summary

Part I of the memoir opens with an italicized paragraph under the heading “[ ]” (3), in which Natasha Trethewey recalls a dream she had three weeks after her mother's death. In it, she and her mother walk around a circular path. A man steps out of the shadows and Trethewey greets him. She turns and sees a hole in the center of her mother's forehead, out of which a light is emanating. Her mother says, “Do you know what it means to have a wound that never heals?” (3). They continue walking until the man appears again, this time holding a gun. She shouts “No!” (3), waking herself up.

In the Prologue, Trethewey describes a studio portrait taken of her mother, Gwendolyn Turnbough, a few months before her murder when she was 40 years old and the author was 19. She wonders what her mother was thinking while...