The Sum of Trifles

The Sum of Trifles - Paperback

$24.95
$24.95
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The Sum of Trifles
  • The Sum of Trifles
The Sum of Trifles - Paperback

The Sum of Trifles - Paperback

by Julia Ridley Smith
$24.95
$24.95

Book Overview

When Julia Ridley Smith's parents died, they left behind a virtual museum of furniture, books, art, and artifacts. Between the contents of their home, the stock from their North Carolina antiques shop, and the ephemera of two lives lived, Smith faced a monumental task. What would she do with her parents' possessions?

Smith's wise and moving memoir in essays, The Sum of Trifles, peels back the layers of meaning surrounding specific objects her parents owned, from an eighteenth-century miniature to her father's prosthetics. A vintage hi-fi provides a view of her often tense relationship with her father, whose love of jazz kindled her own artistic impulse. A Japanese screen embodies her mother's principles of good taste and good manners, while an antebellum quilt prompts Smith to grapple with her family's slaveholding legacy. Along the way, she turns to literature that illuminates how her inheritance shaped her notions of identity and purpose.

The Sum of Trifles offers up dark humor and raw feeling, mixed with an erudite streak. It's a curious, thoughtful look at how we live in and with our material culture and how we face our losses as we decide what to keep and what to let go.
ISBN9780820360416
Author Julia Ridley Smith
PublisherUniversity of Georgia Press
GenreBiography and Relationships
FormatPaperback
PublishedNovember 2021
LanguageENG- English
Pages256
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography Family & Relationships Nonfiction

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More by Julia Ridley Smith

The Sum of Trifles

The Sum of Trifles - Paperback

The Sum of Trifles - Paperback

By Julia Ridley Smith

About Julia Ridley Smith

Sex Romp Gone Wrong is Julia Ridley Smith's first story collection. Her first book, The Sum of Trifles, is a memoir published by the University of Georgia Press (2021) as a title in their Crux literary nonfiction series. Julia's short stories and essays have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, American Literary Review, Arts and Letters, the Carolina Quarterly, Chelsea, Ecotone, Electric Literature, the Greensboro Review, the New England Review, Southern Cultures, and The Southern Review, among other places. Julia teaches creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill.

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