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serendipitysbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
To Free The Captives is part memoir, part family history, part musing on the racial history and future of America. Tracy Smith is best known as a poet - she was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019 - so it’s no surprise that I enjoyed her very precise prose. Some sections like her conceptualisation of the Free and the Freed, were thought provoking; others, such as her exploration of her relationship with alcohol, and her two marriages, were honest and vulnerable. My main quibble with this book would be its lack of coherence. I can’t help feeling that this is several separate short works that just happen to be bound together. Worth the read though, even if my personal preference would be for more overt unity.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Slavery
alisse's review
emotional
inspiring
reflective
4.5
I have loved Smith’s poetry for years, and her prose is just as magical. Here she does what all good memoirs should do: tell the deeply personal while allowing for the reader to see themselves in it. The beauty of TO FREE THE CAPTIVES is the way in which Smith ties her own story and grief to that of the American experience, particularly as it applies to our history of racism and the complexity of life in the 21st century.