9780593534779_

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet: a stunning meditation on ritual and collectiveness that explores how older forms of inquiryfrom song to prayer to ways of public gatheringmight help us all survive violent times and address Americas shared history.

A vulnerable, honest look at a life lived in a country still struggling with its evilsHopefulBeautiful and haunting.Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again: James Baldwins America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

In 2020, heartsick from constant assaults on Black life, Tracy K. Smith wondered if a sense of collective enterprise could return to American life. Meditating and praying, writing and remembering, she communed with ancestors and her familys past. In doing so, she began to wonder if these forms of ritual were in fact exactly what was missing from how America addressed race and itself. In this tender and profoundly urgent book, Smith draws on several avenues of thinkingpersonal, historical, and spiritualto create a radically uplifting work about how such practices could inform our individual lives, as well as that of the nation.

To Free the Captives begins this journey by assembling a new vocabulary of American life. Parsing the difference between the Free and the Freed, of the near and the soonsoon as defined in black spiritualsshe etches a clear description of where we are at this point, four hundred years into the American experiment. Pulling from her own, recent intimate losses, Smith draws us away from the broken comfort of easy certainties to the lip of what is logical and makes a compelling argument for the importance of faithof spiritual language and practicein confronting Americas past.

To Free the Captives invites the reader to a gathering of spirits, as Smith defines it. Calling upon her elders, from the poet Lucille Clifton to the wisdom of her late father, she forms a clear-eyed vision of American life and of Black life born of elegy and pride, an idea of a nation in which decency is possible so long as we admit truly what we are and have been. In the context of deep polarization and continued violence, this is a strikingly hopeful book, vulnerable, clear-eyed about the work that remains to be done, yet determined to see what is yet possible when the spirit is called forth.

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A TIME AND WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR The New York Times Book Review Editors Choice A stunning personal manifesto on memory, family, and history that explores how we in America mighttogethercome to a new view of our shared past

A vulnerable, honest look at a life lived in a country still struggling with its evils...Hopeful...Beautiful and haunting. Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin 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 din of human division and strife. With lyricism and urgency, Smith draws on several avenues of thinkingpersonal, documentary, and spiritualto understand who we are as a nation and what we might hope to mean to one another.

In Smiths own words, To 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 Americas oldest wounds and meeting the urgencies of our present.

To Free the Captives touches down in Sunflower, Alabama, the red-dirt town where Smiths fathers family comes from, and where her grandfather returned after World War Iwith a heros 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.

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 forfulfilling 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?

...(*_*)9780593534779_

A TIME AND WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A stunning personal manifesto on memory, family, and history that explores how we in America might—together—come to a new view of our shared past

“A vulnerable, honest look at a life lived in a country still struggling with its evils...Hopeful...Beautiful and haunting.” —Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin 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 “din of human division and strife.” With lyricism and urgency, Smith draws on several avenues of thinking—personal, documentary, and spiritual—to understand who we are as a nation and what we might hope to mean to one another.

In Smith’s own words, “To 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’s oldest wounds and meeting the urgencies of our present.”

To Free the Captives touches down in Sunflower, Alabama, the red-dirt town where Smith’s father’s family comes from, and where her grandfather returned after World War Iwith a hero’s 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.

To Free the Captives

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