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rmardel's review against another edition
4.0
One of Smith's gifts seems to be in shining light on how the ordinary is, in and of itself, extraordinary.
marystevens's review against another edition
3.0
Beeautifully written memoir by an author with a rather dull black middle class life apart from the very tragic death of her mother from cancer when she was just a child. Smith's writing about her mother was riveting, but otherwise I was a little bored. The author is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. In 2017 she became the US Poet Laureate. She teaches at Princeton.
gmdudley4's review against another edition
3.0
Short review: Confession- this is my second time trying to read this book. The first time was right after it was published and I just could not get into it. I thought that I must have "been going through something" then I picked it up again once Smith was announced as poet laureate. Smith is an excellent writer, but this memoir did not move me in the same ways as her poetry. I understand this work as her trying to come to terms with the life and death of her mother to cancer, but that theme was lost in the book. I guess I thought I would be reading about a mother-daughter dynamic, but it was much like a autobiographical tale told through short-ish stories. I really wanted to like this book because Smith is such a goooooooood writer. Pick it up, maybe it will do something for you that it did not do for me.
codellreads's review against another edition
5.0
So many beautiful sentences. A story of a mother and a daughter, of faith and searching.
shirleenr's review against another edition
3.0
3.75/5
My rating reflects difficulty to get into Ordinary Light's first 200 pages., more a judgement on me than her contents. Tracy Smith divides her memoir into five acts. The beginning acts Smith devotes to her upbringing in California on military bases and then pre-Silicon Valley. Her final chapters are where Smith discusses college independence, cements her writing path towards poetry, and her mother's death from cancer.
I suspect my impasse is how un-poetic and densely expansive I found this work. I imagined a more poetic, sparse, experimental writing style. I recognize her honest, open, self-questioning and humble approach to this genre. Was that a problem for other readers ? When Smith retreats into elaborating about her thoughts in isolation, memories of her life as the youngest child of seven, and her P.O.V. baby in the family. That's where momentum drops. I lose my place and restart the book weeks later.
I am glad I stuck with this book, because how Smith grapples with her mothers final years while she manages somehow to finish college alone on the East Coast (Harvard), her pain and struggle felt more present. When she meditates on how writing a note to a professor "My mother is dying" makes her mother's terminal illness and impending consequences real to her, her memoir comes most alive and present to me. The final chapters Ordinary Light wrangle with a mother's religious devotion whose intensity her daughter doesn't share. The subsequent distance and guilt which intrudes into a mother-daughter bond I know well, and finally, the memoir's conflicts felt both immediate and universal.
My rating reflects difficulty to get into Ordinary Light's first 200 pages., more a judgement on me than her contents. Tracy Smith divides her memoir into five acts. The beginning acts Smith devotes to her upbringing in California on military bases and then pre-Silicon Valley. Her final chapters are where Smith discusses college independence, cements her writing path towards poetry, and her mother's death from cancer.
I suspect my impasse is how un-poetic and densely expansive I found this work. I imagined a more poetic, sparse, experimental writing style. I recognize her honest, open, self-questioning and humble approach to this genre. Was that a problem for other readers ? When Smith retreats into elaborating about her thoughts in isolation, memories of her life as the youngest child of seven, and her P.O.V. baby in the family. That's where momentum drops. I lose my place and restart the book weeks later.
I am glad I stuck with this book, because how Smith grapples with her mothers final years while she manages somehow to finish college alone on the East Coast (Harvard), her pain and struggle felt more present. When she meditates on how writing a note to a professor "My mother is dying" makes her mother's terminal illness and impending consequences real to her, her memoir comes most alive and present to me. The final chapters Ordinary Light wrangle with a mother's religious devotion whose intensity her daughter doesn't share. The subsequent distance and guilt which intrudes into a mother-daughter bond I know well, and finally, the memoir's conflicts felt both immediate and universal.
whats_margaret_reading's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent memoir from an excellent poet. The combination of disagreeing with parents, growing up, and illness, was treated in an interesting and original way.
m_figg's review against another edition
3.0
I love Smith's poetry, and she's been a terrific Poet Laureate, so I wanted to like this more, but I found it rather dull. There were a few great moments - the chapter about her halloween costume!! - but I found there was not as much reflection as I'd hoped from a memoir. Her mother still felt one-dimensional when I was through.