To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul - Paperback

$17.00

To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul - Paperback

Name: To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul - Paperback
Brand: BooksCloud
SKU: 9780593467985
Price: 17.00 USD
Availability: InStock

by Tracy K. Smith

$17.00

Book Overview

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.

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 I with 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.

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?

ISBN	9780593467985
Author	Tracy K. Smith
Publisher	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Genre	Biography and Education
Format	Paperback
Published	October 2024
Language	ENG- English
Pages	288
Weight	1.0 lb
Target Audience	Adults
Print Size	Standard Print

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