{"product_id":"to-free-the-captives-book-tracy-k-smith-9780593534762","title":"To Free the Captives","description":"\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eTIME \u003c\/i\u003eAND \u003ci\u003eWASHINGTON POST \u003c\/i\u003eBEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003eEditors' 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\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eA 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 \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBegin Again\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eTo Free the Captives\u003c\/i\u003e 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\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003ewith 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBearing courageous witness to the terms of Freedom afforded her as a Black woman, a mother, and an educator in the twenty-first century, \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eSmith 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\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003efulfilling 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?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49752728830225,"sku":"NGR9780593534762","price":21.89,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49790072717585,"sku":"GOR013785542","price":18.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49952931315985,"sku":"CIN059353476XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49990951862545,"sku":"CIN059353476XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51004366586129,"sku":"NIN9780593534762","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/059353476X.jpg?v=1750783333","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/to-free-the-captives-book-tracy-k-smith-9780593534762","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}