UID:
kobvindex_ZLB35158043
ISBN:
9780593534779
Content:
" ONE OF TIME' S ,00 MUST-READ BOOKS OF THE YEAR &bull, The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice &bull,A stunning personal manifesto on memory, family, and history that explores how we in America might&mdash,ogether&mdash,ome to a new view of our shared past &ldquo, vulnerable, honest look at a life lived in a country still struggling with its evils...Hopeful...Beautiful and haunting.&rdquo,&mdash,ddie S. Glaude Jr., author ofBegin Again In 2020, heartsick from constant assaults on Black life, Tracy K. Smith found herself soul-searching and digging into the historical archive for help navigating the &ldquo,in of human division and strife.&rdquo,With lyricism and urgency, Smith draws on several avenues of thinking&mdash,ersonal, documentary, and spiritual&mdash,o understand who we are as a nation and what we might hope to mean to one another. In Smith&rsquo, own words, &ldquo,o write a book about Black strength, Black continuance, and the powerful forms of belief and community that have long bolstered the soul of my people, I used the generations of my own patrilineal family to lean backward toward history, to gather a fuller sense of the lives my own ancestors led, the challenges they endured, and the sources of hope and bolstering they counted on. What this process has led me to believe is that all of us, in the here and now, can choose to work alongside the generations that precede us in tending to America&rsquo, oldest wounds and meeting the urgencies of our present.&rdquo,br〉 To Free the Captives touches down in Sunflower, Alabama, the red-dirt town where Smith&rsquo, father&rsquo, family comes from, and where her grandfather returned after World War I with a hero&rsquo, record but difficult prospects as a Black man. Smith considers his life and the life of her father through the lens of history. Hoping to connect with their strength and continuance, she assembles a new terminology of American life. ,br〉Bearing courageous witness to the terms of Freedom afforded her as a Black woman, a mother, and an educator in the twenty-first century, Smith etches a portrait of where we find ourselves four hundred years into the American experiment. Weaving in an account of her growing spiritual practice, she argues that the soul is not merely a private site of respite or transcendence, but a tool for fulfilling our duties to each other, and a sounding board for our most pressing collective questions: Where are we going as a nation? Where have we been?"
Content:
Biographisches: "TRACY K. SMITH ,s a librettist, a translator, and the author of five acclaimed poetry collections, including Life on Mars, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the National Book Award. From 2017 to 2019, she served as the twenty-second Poet Laureate of the United States. She lives in Massachusetts." Rezension(2): "〈a href=http://www.kirkusreviews.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/kirkus_logo.png alt=Kirkus border=0 /〉〈/a〉: October 1, 2023 The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet combines memoir and history in a powerful new book. Smith, translator, memoirist, and poet laureate of the U.S. 2017 to 2019, delves into her family's history--a history of subjugation, violence, and enslavement--in order to endure the intractability of the world I know. In the world of her forebears, and in her own, she asserts, the Freed are discouraged from confusing themselves with the Free. Freed though they were, her great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents were oppressed and threatened by a world rife with racism. I descend from a history of daily miracles, she writes, by which the soul of a people whom institution upon institution has sought to annihilate yet lives on. Smith's search into her past took her to archives, military records, and census forms, where, she notes, there is no column for Love, but still, the forms reveal names and traces that allow her to reconstruct stories and lives that can liberate us. Those lives were buoyed by a strong sense of spiritual community, where the ring shout served as a shared heartbeat. The shout, Smith explains, is a cultural practice rooted in praise, song, and the soul-sustaining power of something so unperturbed by logic as to call itself the Holy Ghost. Because of her parents' titanic effort, Smith and her siblings grew up to transcend many racial barriers--Smith graduated from Harvard, where she now teaches--and, she writes, were allowed to mistake ourselves for the Free. But as she reflects on her education, career, marriages, and motherhood,and on many recent, recurring incidents of violence against Blacks, she increasingly identifies with the Freed. What, she asks, might this nation stand to learn from a people whose soul alone has carried them through centuries of storm and war? A lyrical memoir conveys an urgent message. COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. " Rezension(3): "〈a href=https://www.booklistonline.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/booklist_logo.png alt=Booklist border=0 /〉〈/a〉: Starred review from October 15, 2023 Former U.S. poet laureate Smith digs into her personal history to come to terms with our current social and political climate in her elegant new memoir. Through research, personal memories, and examination of spiritual practices, she searches for understanding and guidance through the painful and tumultuous present as the country grapples with persistent and insidious racism against Black Americans. She begins with her father's early years--my father's experience will assure him that his people are stewards not solely of the known creature that is family, but of a larger animal called History--and explores this inextricable link throughout the book. The reality of not only surviving America's centuries-long war but thriving, exemplified by her family, is told through poetic and engaging turns of phrases. Smith is adept at looking backwards while expressing an urgency that grounds the reader in the present, writing History arrives? Better to accept that it is never gone despite our insistence to file much of it safely away, out of sight and mind. The juxtaposition of her family's stories with the Black experience in the U.S. feels like a journey toward a greater understanding, one readers are lucky to be invited to take. COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. "
Language:
English
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