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To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul
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.
In 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.”
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 Where are we going as a nation? Where have we been?
“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.
In 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.”
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 Where are we going as a nation? Where have we been?
288 pages, Hardcover
First published November 7, 2023
70 people are currently reading
4949 people want to read
About the author
Tracy K. Smith
42 books846 followersTracy K. Smith is the author of Wade in the Water; Life on Mars, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Duende, winner of the James Laughlin Award; and The Body’s Question, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She is also the editor of an anthology, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, and the author of a memoir, Ordinary Light, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. From 2017 to 2019, Smith served as Poet Laureate of the United States. She teaches at Princeton University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
March 10, 2024
To Free the Captives is Tracy K. Smith’s very personal, often fascinating and powerful, look at the fraught place of race in the American story, its reflection in her family’s history, her personal struggle with sobriety, her reminiscences from childhood through marriages to current life in Massachusetts, the family she grew up in and now her own.
A very interesting segment concerns her discussion of the Free and the Freed and the many discrepancies accorded these two groups in our society ever since 1863. The Freed have never attained the same level of freedom of the Free who were granted it by circumstances of their birth. There is still a long way to go.
This occasionally feels like a stream of consciousness work, needing attention to glean Smith’s full meaning. She is so present throughout this work. I recommend To Free the Captives to readers interested in thoughtful essays on race, American history, memoir, and family life.
An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley. The review is my own.
A very interesting segment concerns her discussion of the Free and the Freed and the many discrepancies accorded these two groups in our society ever since 1863. The Freed have never attained the same level of freedom of the Free who were granted it by circumstances of their birth. There is still a long way to go.
This occasionally feels like a stream of consciousness work, needing attention to glean Smith’s full meaning. She is so present throughout this work. I recommend To Free the Captives to readers interested in thoughtful essays on race, American history, memoir, and family life.
An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley. The review is my own.
October 22, 2023
Dividing people in the U.S. South by race, the blacks and the whites, in our long passed postbellum era, Tracy Smith offers the identifiers of Freed, the once slaves, the blacks, and the Free, the once masters, the whites. To gaze on the past, proper grammar dictates that she speaks of a freeing or to free, the literal historical freeing and a personal psychological and spiritual freeing, having to with the soul, the souls of black people and her soul as a black woman.
She writes of her travels, to a plantation to research a libretto, to family reunions in Alabama, and to North America’s farthest southern country for a vacation. The documents and visits to the family reunion become a finding for poems. The historical allusions to the messiness of the contemporary life of a black woman who became a poet includes broken relationships, her emotional thoughts on being a black mother reading of the murder of Trayvon Martin, her admittal of alcoholism given to the power of meditation as healing and inspiration.
Engaging one of several empowering themes running through her work, of black men, a theme perhaps best epitomized by the title of the poem Strong Men written by Sterling Brown, Sterling the name of one of Tracy Smith’s sons. Perusing documents and photos and conversations with the elders of her family genealogy she learns of the men on her family tree who served in the military. In Wade in the Water, she used documents of letters to put together a group of what is called found poems. During one family reunion she is introduced to the men on horseback in her family, which leads to a meditation on the history of black cowboys. She writes of her two husbands, her twin sons, and as a continuation of this lineage of strong black men, the boy child, a cousin, she holds in her arms.
My thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy.
She writes of her travels, to a plantation to research a libretto, to family reunions in Alabama, and to North America’s farthest southern country for a vacation. The documents and visits to the family reunion become a finding for poems. The historical allusions to the messiness of the contemporary life of a black woman who became a poet includes broken relationships, her emotional thoughts on being a black mother reading of the murder of Trayvon Martin, her admittal of alcoholism given to the power of meditation as healing and inspiration.
Engaging one of several empowering themes running through her work, of black men, a theme perhaps best epitomized by the title of the poem Strong Men written by Sterling Brown, Sterling the name of one of Tracy Smith’s sons. Perusing documents and photos and conversations with the elders of her family genealogy she learns of the men on her family tree who served in the military. In Wade in the Water, she used documents of letters to put together a group of what is called found poems. During one family reunion she is introduced to the men on horseback in her family, which leads to a meditation on the history of black cowboys. She writes of her two husbands, her twin sons, and as a continuation of this lineage of strong black men, the boy child, a cousin, she holds in her arms.
My thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy.
February 7, 2024
There's a lot to like in this. Smith's profiles of her father and extended family were really interesting and a thoughtful reader could draw lines from the post-war benefits white military families got and what Black military families didn't get, outcomes, obviously we still see today. I also liked that she didn't hold back her anger and frustrations when visiting a former plantation.
Smith's own memoir is a little more hazy. She spends an outsized amount of time on her ex-husband without providing a throughline to her current situation. She buries the lede about getting sober-- it's just a few pages with no backstory. It's her choice what to share, but I'd expect she'd know that's the juicy bit. It could have been left out altogether.
I think I expected a little more with this book but I also haven't read her poetry and know look forward to doing so.
Smith's own memoir is a little more hazy. She spends an outsized amount of time on her ex-husband without providing a throughline to her current situation. She buries the lede about getting sober-- it's just a few pages with no backstory. It's her choice what to share, but I'd expect she'd know that's the juicy bit. It could have been left out altogether.
I think I expected a little more with this book but I also haven't read her poetry and know look forward to doing so.
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March 27, 2024I'm not going to assign a star value.
I need to collect my thoughts. Parts of the book are raw, absolutely searing, heartbreaking, and infuriating. Others I found ponderous, even distracting -- but in a way that makes me wonder whether the flaw lies in me and not the book. Because it is the kind of book that makes the reader -- particularly the White reader -- to stop and ask uncomfortable questions.
I'll come back with more.
I need to collect my thoughts. Parts of the book are raw, absolutely searing, heartbreaking, and infuriating. Others I found ponderous, even distracting -- but in a way that makes me wonder whether the flaw lies in me and not the book. Because it is the kind of book that makes the reader -- particularly the White reader -- to stop and ask uncomfortable questions.
I'll come back with more.
November 20, 2023
To Free the Captives is a delightfully hard-to-categorize book. I appreciate the author’s defiance of the publishing industry’s genre tyranny, even though the free form of this work occasionally strayed into focuslessness. The author, a former poet laureate, calls it “a plea for the American soul” (the subtitle), but that aim appeared in fitful glints more than as a strong throughline for the reader to follow.
This intuitive approach reflects, I suspect, the author’s poetical bent; I’ve read several works of prose written by poets lately, and they all shy away from the more linear style of born prose writers. It’s a liberating form of writing but occasionally a frustrating one for me: just when I think she’s closing in on some solid insight I can glom on to, she shies off, apparently feeling she has said enough for the reader to get the point. Sometimes she has, sometimes she hasn’t—or else I was too thick to get it.
The book is structured partly as memoir, partly as family history with her family standing in for a wider African American community. Tracy Smith briefly tracks the life experiences of her grandfather and father before turning to episodes from her own life, but the personal histories mentioned are mainly a pretext for illuminating aspects of the Black experience in America. She has an extraordinary intuitive gift for thinking herself into the lives of people glimpsed in blurry black-and-white photos, for revealing the subjects’ personalities and the texture of their lives through imaginative seeing. Those passages in the book gave me the experience I crave in reading, the expansive sense of my mind blowing open with unexpected perceptions.
Other parts did not work quite as well for me. Maybe I’m kidding myself, but about the third time she read a white person’s social questions as an entitled effort to pigeonhole her, I started to feel a bit miffed: Maybe that white person is just trying to forge a connection with you? Maybe they’re looking for common ground? As a person she sometimes revealed herself as tending toward the prickly and, dare I say it, arrogant, sure she knows more about another person’s motives than they do themselves. Nevertheless, I learned from her interpretation of these interactions, and appreciated the humbling lessons.
I wholeheartedly loved her depiction of interactions among Black people, both within her family and observed in others. Those moments contain a loving celebration of individuality paired with a sense of the interactions taking place as part of a timeless, multigenerational history, souls in the now surrounded by the loving support of all the souls who came before. For those living constantly in a society that marginalizes and diminishes them, who have to sustain what W. E. B. DuBois calls Double Consciousness in all their public existence, these moments away from the dominant majority are to be treasured, and Smith illuminates them with a deft eloquence.
This is a book I was very glad to read and will want to read again.
This intuitive approach reflects, I suspect, the author’s poetical bent; I’ve read several works of prose written by poets lately, and they all shy away from the more linear style of born prose writers. It’s a liberating form of writing but occasionally a frustrating one for me: just when I think she’s closing in on some solid insight I can glom on to, she shies off, apparently feeling she has said enough for the reader to get the point. Sometimes she has, sometimes she hasn’t—or else I was too thick to get it.
The book is structured partly as memoir, partly as family history with her family standing in for a wider African American community. Tracy Smith briefly tracks the life experiences of her grandfather and father before turning to episodes from her own life, but the personal histories mentioned are mainly a pretext for illuminating aspects of the Black experience in America. She has an extraordinary intuitive gift for thinking herself into the lives of people glimpsed in blurry black-and-white photos, for revealing the subjects’ personalities and the texture of their lives through imaginative seeing. Those passages in the book gave me the experience I crave in reading, the expansive sense of my mind blowing open with unexpected perceptions.
Other parts did not work quite as well for me. Maybe I’m kidding myself, but about the third time she read a white person’s social questions as an entitled effort to pigeonhole her, I started to feel a bit miffed: Maybe that white person is just trying to forge a connection with you? Maybe they’re looking for common ground? As a person she sometimes revealed herself as tending toward the prickly and, dare I say it, arrogant, sure she knows more about another person’s motives than they do themselves. Nevertheless, I learned from her interpretation of these interactions, and appreciated the humbling lessons.
I wholeheartedly loved her depiction of interactions among Black people, both within her family and observed in others. Those moments contain a loving celebration of individuality paired with a sense of the interactions taking place as part of a timeless, multigenerational history, souls in the now surrounded by the loving support of all the souls who came before. For those living constantly in a society that marginalizes and diminishes them, who have to sustain what W. E. B. DuBois calls Double Consciousness in all their public existence, these moments away from the dominant majority are to be treasured, and Smith illuminates them with a deft eloquence.
This is a book I was very glad to read and will want to read again.
November 18, 2023
Owing to the peace TKS brought me daily during her time as the host of The Slowdown, I could listen to her read something as mundane as a car owner's manual and feel good. Luckily, To Free the Captives is so much more, even, at times, a life manual. With her poet's care for words and phrasing, TKS discusses tracing and communing with her ancestors, sobriety, parenting, marriage, the meaning of life, and through it all, the distinction between the Free and the Freed. The only downside to listening is that I could not spend time with lines like I would have done with a print version.
January 17, 2024
I really wanted to like this book, but it was so hard for me to follow. To me it felt like it jumped around a lot without much of a rhyme or reason. It was hard for me to follow if we were talking about something in the present, records from the past, things she dreamt or experienced during meditation, or hopes for the future.
October 30, 2023
Thank you to Net Galley and Knopf for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. Such a beautifully written book filled with stories of family - extended family and present day, family history, race, society, and culture that all meld together to make us captives in life and how we try to break free in many different ways. The book is separated into chapters about different parts of her life. I especially was struck by the chapters about her parents and about her first husband (who is Mexican) and her second husband (who is white) and their children. I find that poets write the most wonderfully lyrical prose. Not only was the writing meaningful and thought-provoking if was a pleasure to read. I highly recommend this one!
July 7, 2023
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning poe laureate Tracy K Smith, To Free the Captives is a mesmerizing revelation on
past, family ties, heritage and American History.
This is an unforgettable book at our country and the ongoing struggle to make sense of American History and make space to live with it. When a poet writes prose, every word counts and Smith has brought new perspective to words such as The Free and The Freed. This is an important work following the wake of violence upon Black Americans highlighted during the pandemic.
#knopf #pantheon #tracyksmith #tofreethecaptives
past, family ties, heritage and American History.
This is an unforgettable book at our country and the ongoing struggle to make sense of American History and make space to live with it. When a poet writes prose, every word counts and Smith has brought new perspective to words such as The Free and The Freed. This is an important work following the wake of violence upon Black Americans highlighted during the pandemic.
#knopf #pantheon #tracyksmith #tofreethecaptives
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February 17, 2024For about three-fourths of this book, I thought I was reading Tracy K. Smith’s memoir 𝘖𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘓𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 rather than her “manifesto on memory, family, and history that explores how we in America might—together—come to a new view of our shared past.” (from the publisher)
I kept asking myself when is the memoir part coming?
I loved the podcast called 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 when Tracy K. Smith hosted it. (Maybe I would still love it, but I stopped listening when she passed the reins to someone new.) Smith would read a poem and then offer her take. It all lasted five minutes. Her voice was soft, gentle, and soothing. Tommy June would sometimes listen with me, and these minutes meant so much to me that I wrote TKS a love letter, and friends! She wrote me back! She even included a book of her poems.
So, for this reason, I will always love anything she writes even if I understand very little of it. She is too smart for me in 𝘛𝘰 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴. The parts I did get were beautiful. I’m excited to read 𝘖𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘓𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵.
No rating.
: The part where she loses her wallet in her Brooklyn neighborhood, retraces her steps, and finds a man, one she sees daily, holding it asking her, “Do you know why you greet your neighbors?” She is relieved then fearful as he gives her the wallet back, “Because they watch out for you.” Since that moment TKS greets her neighbors. (166)
: telling her daughter about Black people’s relationship with police and remembering her own mom having the conversation with her. (188)
: I have seen great cats whose bellies, though empty, swing low from having carried litter after litter of cubs. And I think the whole spirit of a person who has had children is like that. Huge, torqued, visible, heavy still with the weight of what it once held. The great cat hunts. Sometimes at rest on the plain, she will raise a mighty claw to a foe, will rise on hind legs and demonstrate the intention to kill if she must. Often enough, though, she will merely flick her tail, stalking off. Sometimes of course she must run. (197-198)
I kept asking myself when is the memoir part coming?
I loved the podcast called 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 when Tracy K. Smith hosted it. (Maybe I would still love it, but I stopped listening when she passed the reins to someone new.) Smith would read a poem and then offer her take. It all lasted five minutes. Her voice was soft, gentle, and soothing. Tommy June would sometimes listen with me, and these minutes meant so much to me that I wrote TKS a love letter, and friends! She wrote me back! She even included a book of her poems.
So, for this reason, I will always love anything she writes even if I understand very little of it. She is too smart for me in 𝘛𝘰 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴. The parts I did get were beautiful. I’m excited to read 𝘖𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘓𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵.
No rating.
: The part where she loses her wallet in her Brooklyn neighborhood, retraces her steps, and finds a man, one she sees daily, holding it asking her, “Do you know why you greet your neighbors?” She is relieved then fearful as he gives her the wallet back, “Because they watch out for you.” Since that moment TKS greets her neighbors. (166)
: telling her daughter about Black people’s relationship with police and remembering her own mom having the conversation with her. (188)
: I have seen great cats whose bellies, though empty, swing low from having carried litter after litter of cubs. And I think the whole spirit of a person who has had children is like that. Huge, torqued, visible, heavy still with the weight of what it once held. The great cat hunts. Sometimes at rest on the plain, she will raise a mighty claw to a foe, will rise on hind legs and demonstrate the intention to kill if she must. Often enough, though, she will merely flick her tail, stalking off. Sometimes of course she must run. (197-198)
August 2, 2024
Perspective is everything. I felt the sincerity, sadness, gratitude, fear, bitterness, reverence, and hope that the author poured into this work. Parsing through the history of your family to better understand and celebrate your current life while grieving the sacrifices that were made both willing and unwillingly is no easy feat.
I would technically be classified of the “us, and the we” that you refer to, having come from what America would deem a standard white American lineage. And I think that’s the thing that I keep struggling to recognize. That through no other reason than who my ancestors were, and no action of my own, I don’t think twice before crossing a street, or live in fear of a potential police encounter. Reading this book reminds me of how prevalent racism and classism is still in effect today...even in the little things.
I do not understand how people ascribe another persons value based on the color of their skin or features that are considered different than their own. Thank you for writing this.
I would technically be classified of the “us, and the we” that you refer to, having come from what America would deem a standard white American lineage. And I think that’s the thing that I keep struggling to recognize. That through no other reason than who my ancestors were, and no action of my own, I don’t think twice before crossing a street, or live in fear of a potential police encounter. Reading this book reminds me of how prevalent racism and classism is still in effect today...even in the little things.
I do not understand how people ascribe another persons value based on the color of their skin or features that are considered different than their own. Thank you for writing this.
September 2, 2024
Soon as in:
One day— And Soon as a way of admitting: Perhaps not soon at all— Soon as in: Keep the faith, don’t dismay, we can make it— Soon in the face of the interminable, the unbearable— Soon as encouragement against the indomitable— Soon imparts the force of something other than human and the staying power of something spanning more than a single human lifetime. Soon is the longest game. One scaled to soul-time. When a person stands up in church on Sunday and sings— Soon and very soon, We are going to see the king Hallelujah, Hallelujah, We are going to see the king —they do so as a way of putting the losses and indignities of the day-to-day into perspective with the scope of the soul. Soon insists that what is sown, salvaged, and summoned will bloom, keep, and reverberate forward into every future.
Powerful and poetic memoir that speaks to the soul, inspiring, well-written, and must-read.
One day— And Soon as a way of admitting: Perhaps not soon at all— Soon as in: Keep the faith, don’t dismay, we can make it— Soon in the face of the interminable, the unbearable— Soon as encouragement against the indomitable— Soon imparts the force of something other than human and the staying power of something spanning more than a single human lifetime. Soon is the longest game. One scaled to soul-time. When a person stands up in church on Sunday and sings— Soon and very soon, We are going to see the king Hallelujah, Hallelujah, We are going to see the king —they do so as a way of putting the losses and indignities of the day-to-day into perspective with the scope of the soul. Soon insists that what is sown, salvaged, and summoned will bloom, keep, and reverberate forward into every future.
Powerful and poetic memoir that speaks to the soul, inspiring, well-written, and must-read.
September 29, 2025
3.5/5
Who do I need to talk to if I need to talk? Is everyone made to be a speaker, a listener? There must be those with needs that only social media can fulfill. Flat-screened, flat-screened, everything enjoyed at their surface; there is never engagement.
--
Heartbreaking stories here. Heartbreaking hopes. Everyone deserves to have their story told. Not everyone wants this. Not everyone wants to see others as people, or to see themselves as wrong. How do you teach them? Through teaching. Changing prior narratives. But yet. When does this popular, mass group of the uneducated people decide that these producers, these storytellers, are "pushing an agenda" and turn away from new (old) stories? I do not know. I am not the best peacemaker.
I think Smith gets too caught up in self-indulgence at times, hammering on nails already nailed. But other than that I enjoyed it.
Who do I need to talk to if I need to talk? Is everyone made to be a speaker, a listener? There must be those with needs that only social media can fulfill. Flat-screened, flat-screened, everything enjoyed at their surface; there is never engagement.
--
Heartbreaking stories here. Heartbreaking hopes. Everyone deserves to have their story told. Not everyone wants this. Not everyone wants to see others as people, or to see themselves as wrong. How do you teach them? Through teaching. Changing prior narratives. But yet. When does this popular, mass group of the uneducated people decide that these producers, these storytellers, are "pushing an agenda" and turn away from new (old) stories? I do not know. I am not the best peacemaker.
I think Smith gets too caught up in self-indulgence at times, hammering on nails already nailed. But other than that I enjoyed it.
January 24, 2024
Stunning. Gorgeous. Lyrical and heartbreaking. Filled with life stories and life and love that often left me either breathless, or laughing, or crying [cue ugly sobbing], or all three.
This was my first book by this author, but it will most certainly not be my last. Absolutely gorgeous. Highly recommended.
"This book is a an act of seeking instigated by the understanding that the losses we in our time are called to bear are great and increasing. But I believe there are things we know -- and things we might muster there wherewithal to recollect -- that will be of help. This is one attempt to know and to recollect."
Tracy K. Smith [in acknowledgements]
Thank you to NetGalley, Tracy K. Smith, and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This was my first book by this author, but it will most certainly not be my last. Absolutely gorgeous. Highly recommended.
"This book is a an act of seeking instigated by the understanding that the losses we in our time are called to bear are great and increasing. But I believe there are things we know -- and things we might muster there wherewithal to recollect -- that will be of help. This is one attempt to know and to recollect."
Tracy K. Smith [in acknowledgements]
Thank you to NetGalley, Tracy K. Smith, and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Read
February 28, 2025To Free the Captives is a deeply personal reflection on our country's troubled history with racism. It's hard to give this one a star value because, of course, Tracy K. Smith's prose is brilliant and evocative and moving. It felt almost stream-of-conscious in how it floated between Smith's own life, her ancestors, and general reflections on history. I wanted it to have a bit more of a through-line or structure, but I think that's more a matter of my expectations set by traditional publishing and genre boundaries.
January 17, 2024
This book took me a minute to get into, but once I did I really liked it. It’s a memoir, and she shares so much about herself and her ancestors. Some of the stories she shares can make you depressed about people (white people) and the state of the world. But her main point is that we’re all in this together and we can all grow and do better. 4 stars not just because of the point she’s making but also because the book is entertaining and captivating.
March 8, 2024
Lots of sorrow, lots of introspection, lots of disappointment and fear, and yet, where is the rage I feel in me? Feels more like resignation than anything, and that odd the saddest part of it all - just like the woman she references who was attacked in her home.
December 27, 2023
Tracy takes us on her families past journey as well as glimpses into her present day journey. I enjoyed the personal touches she gives while digging into our very dark history. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
January 16, 2024
Unique, poetic take on family / American history in these United States from an African-American author with Princeton / Harvard pedigrees. I heard a selection of this book on NPR and found the author's words insightful & moving, and her work imaginative & reminiscent of my own family history on my father's side. Listening to the full work, narrated but the author, I found it a fairly exceptional memoir and memorial.
June 26, 2024
Interesting, "vulnerable", "powerful" and "hopeful". Sorry, quoted others' reviews.
October 29, 2023
This work has layers and it goes deep. It is both personal and universal. At first I thought she was examining the intricacies of America’s multi-colored quilt – honoring and recognizing the many hands that labored to plant, weave, and stitch the fabric into fruition. Surprisingly, Tracy took things to another level - her brilliance shines when she shares her family history as America’s history and examines the concepts of freedom as it relates to the free and the freed. Her poetic genius conjures into words the strength, determination, and love that lie within the souls of Black folk and Indigenous peoples over the generations. She recounts her family history including her own memories to cite how they persevered through America’s racist and discriminatory policies that spawned decades of setback and disappointment and during those times it was faith, love, and hope that sustained and propelled them forward. This is a very personal and soul-searching project - I love the way she pays homage to the men in her family and her bravery when she shares family photos, successes and losses, pain and joy. There’s no doubt this work was a very cathartic exercise for her because she praises the benefits of meditation as a balm and source of inspiration.
I highlighted frequently – there are some beautifully written passages that spew wisdom, inspiration, and gratitude. I enjoyed my time with this offering.
Thanks to Knopf, Pantheon Vintage, and Achor (the publishers) and NetGalley for the opportunity to read in advance for an honest review.
I highlighted frequently – there are some beautifully written passages that spew wisdom, inspiration, and gratitude. I enjoyed my time with this offering.
Thanks to Knopf, Pantheon Vintage, and Achor (the publishers) and NetGalley for the opportunity to read in advance for an honest review.
October 10, 2023
I have long loved Ms. Smith... her poetry is some of my favorite! So when I found this available on Netgalley, I jumped at the chance to read a copy.
To Free the Captives does not disappoint! It is masterfully... beautifully written. Her prose is heartfelt as she looks back and her history, the history of slavery, and how to unpack all of that now today. Another reviewer noted that she had highlighted so many passages and I did too. This is a book that I will be purchasing so that I can physically highlight, underline, and notate. It is a book that will stay with me for a very long time... Smith floored me with this simple statement: The Free and the Freed.
I will never think the same way again... and in the era of banned books being all the rage, if you are looking for a place to start as you contemplate the true history of this country... To Free the Captives is the perfect place to start. I highly recommend!
I would like to thank Netgalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for this copy of a book!
To Free the Captives does not disappoint! It is masterfully... beautifully written. Her prose is heartfelt as she looks back and her history, the history of slavery, and how to unpack all of that now today. Another reviewer noted that she had highlighted so many passages and I did too. This is a book that I will be purchasing so that I can physically highlight, underline, and notate. It is a book that will stay with me for a very long time... Smith floored me with this simple statement: The Free and the Freed.
I will never think the same way again... and in the era of banned books being all the rage, if you are looking for a place to start as you contemplate the true history of this country... To Free the Captives is the perfect place to start. I highly recommend!
I would like to thank Netgalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for this copy of a book!
February 22, 2024
3.5 Stars
Among the books I’ve read in the social justice domain, I found myself connecting less readily to this one. It is a collection of essays loosely organized around the dichotomy of the Free and the Freed. Some lean more in the direction of historical reflections while others are more memoiristic, but all are connected to Smith’s family and experiences.
I was most engaged by the latter half of the book, especially the chapter “Scenes from a Marriage” and the one to follow, “Sobriety.” The writing in both is more urgent, filled with vulnerable self-examination and the kinds of metaphors poets provide that cause you to sit up and take notice. These two pieces are the best fulfillment of the subtitle of the book: ‘A Plea for the American Soul.” The other chapters didn’t spark the same frisson for me.
Among the books I’ve read in the social justice domain, I found myself connecting less readily to this one. It is a collection of essays loosely organized around the dichotomy of the Free and the Freed. Some lean more in the direction of historical reflections while others are more memoiristic, but all are connected to Smith’s family and experiences.
I was most engaged by the latter half of the book, especially the chapter “Scenes from a Marriage” and the one to follow, “Sobriety.” The writing in both is more urgent, filled with vulnerable self-examination and the kinds of metaphors poets provide that cause you to sit up and take notice. These two pieces are the best fulfillment of the subtitle of the book: ‘A Plea for the American Soul.” The other chapters didn’t spark the same frisson for me.
May 19, 2024
Beautifully written, haunting, and poetic essay collection.
July 8, 2024
DNF - audio sounded robotic and stilted. I think I'd rather try the print book.
January 7, 2024
When reading non-fiction I usually like books that make their point in a very organized and efficient manner. But I can enjoy a book that wanders and muses and meanders if it is well-written. This book is that second kind.
You can tell that the book was written by a poet. The use of language is rich and lovely. And Smith has a tendency to dig deep into every experience and detail
The book did feel a little unfocused. It’s mostly a family memoir. There is quite a bit of commentary on American life – and Black American life in particular – but not enough to justify the subtitle “A Plea for the American Soul.” A couple of chapters meandered so much that I had to keep going back to earlier pages to remember what she was even talking about.
But this was still a four-star read for me because of Smith’s deep thinking, her obvious love for her family, and her beautiful use of the English language. As a white person, I also appreciate books that do a good job of helping me to see things from minority points of view. I don’t always agree, and sometimes I feel a little annoyed, but I still like knowing how things look to people who are different from me.
I especially loved Smith’s notion of her father’s soul flying over the world and choosing Sunflower, Alabama, as his home, and Eugene and Rose Smith as his parents. I know it’s fanciful, but I’ve also sometimes entertained the notion that pre-born souls choose their families. If nothing else, it’s a very pretty thought.
At the end of one chapter, she asks (talking about Black people), “What might this nation stand to learn from a people whose soul alone has carried them through centuries of storm and war?” Something else I’ve sometimes wondered. Later in the book, she hints at an answer to that question. “The scale of Black hope has never been content with a single person’s freedom or even a single people’s freedom Rather it is grounded in the wisdom that genuine freedom brings with it the transformation – the true liberation – of all humankind.” And “What might we stand to gain if we were to but adjust our gaze to the scale and the stakes of this other larger undertaking, this colossal enterprise to which each is essential. Not in the hereafter…But here, today, where we ache and grieve and where our best effort is mightily needed.”
But my favorite chapter was the one she wrote about her children and about getting sober. It was so heartfelt and honest. I had to chuckle about one incident, though. She writes about bike-riding with her husband and three children. She felt like her family looked so disorderly compared to their white neighbors whose children pedaled obediently along right behind their parents like ducklings. Girlfriend, I am white and I am here to tell you that I feel exactly the same when I compare myself to those families. I don’t know what they have going for them, but I promise you it is more than just whiteness.
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Author of The Saint's Mistress
You can tell that the book was written by a poet. The use of language is rich and lovely. And Smith has a tendency to dig deep into every experience and detail
The book did feel a little unfocused. It’s mostly a family memoir. There is quite a bit of commentary on American life – and Black American life in particular – but not enough to justify the subtitle “A Plea for the American Soul.” A couple of chapters meandered so much that I had to keep going back to earlier pages to remember what she was even talking about.
But this was still a four-star read for me because of Smith’s deep thinking, her obvious love for her family, and her beautiful use of the English language. As a white person, I also appreciate books that do a good job of helping me to see things from minority points of view. I don’t always agree, and sometimes I feel a little annoyed, but I still like knowing how things look to people who are different from me.
I especially loved Smith’s notion of her father’s soul flying over the world and choosing Sunflower, Alabama, as his home, and Eugene and Rose Smith as his parents. I know it’s fanciful, but I’ve also sometimes entertained the notion that pre-born souls choose their families. If nothing else, it’s a very pretty thought.
At the end of one chapter, she asks (talking about Black people), “What might this nation stand to learn from a people whose soul alone has carried them through centuries of storm and war?” Something else I’ve sometimes wondered. Later in the book, she hints at an answer to that question. “The scale of Black hope has never been content with a single person’s freedom or even a single people’s freedom Rather it is grounded in the wisdom that genuine freedom brings with it the transformation – the true liberation – of all humankind.” And “What might we stand to gain if we were to but adjust our gaze to the scale and the stakes of this other larger undertaking, this colossal enterprise to which each is essential. Not in the hereafter…But here, today, where we ache and grieve and where our best effort is mightily needed.”
But my favorite chapter was the one she wrote about her children and about getting sober. It was so heartfelt and honest. I had to chuckle about one incident, though. She writes about bike-riding with her husband and three children. She felt like her family looked so disorderly compared to their white neighbors whose children pedaled obediently along right behind their parents like ducklings. Girlfriend, I am white and I am here to tell you that I feel exactly the same when I compare myself to those families. I don’t know what they have going for them, but I promise you it is more than just whiteness.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog
Author of The Saint's Mistress
February 18, 2024
Here is a review I do not wish to write. Here we have a writer who writes beautifully, her prose reveals truth profound and wrenching, about a subject I as a white person HAVE UTTERLY NO BUSINESS EVALUATING... and yet here I am assigning a star rating on how I felt. My error here is freely admitted and yet I find it cowardice not to assign my star rating and giving this a rating.
I write reviews for myself, there are so many who write great reviews, I am not one of those people. *Heavy sigh*, my thoughts on this are that I do not seek out beautiful prose. I seek out clear text, distinct chronology, facts and contexts. This read was deeply personal, often profound, beautiful, dream like and utterly depressing. I am better having read this book but I often was feeling less than inspired by the text. It left me with deep feelings of pain, a pain for which I felt empathy and not the release of catharsis as sympathy. I know deep down that my feeling of empathy is good work, worthy of doing but I did not enjoy it. Again, I know that I was exposed to deep truths in this text, stories that I am certain I will vaguely remember as time goes on. Stories that will seek into my subconscious but will not linger in my conscious because the writing too often felt overly poetic and dream like. Again, this is not the type of writing I seek out but perhaps you do. For that reason I would recommend this book so that you may hear of the authors perspective which is vital even if your reviewer can not harness it directly.
I write reviews for myself, there are so many who write great reviews, I am not one of those people. *Heavy sigh*, my thoughts on this are that I do not seek out beautiful prose. I seek out clear text, distinct chronology, facts and contexts. This read was deeply personal, often profound, beautiful, dream like and utterly depressing. I am better having read this book but I often was feeling less than inspired by the text. It left me with deep feelings of pain, a pain for which I felt empathy and not the release of catharsis as sympathy. I know deep down that my feeling of empathy is good work, worthy of doing but I did not enjoy it. Again, I know that I was exposed to deep truths in this text, stories that I am certain I will vaguely remember as time goes on. Stories that will seek into my subconscious but will not linger in my conscious because the writing too often felt overly poetic and dream like. Again, this is not the type of writing I seek out but perhaps you do. For that reason I would recommend this book so that you may hear of the authors perspective which is vital even if your reviewer can not harness it directly.
November 17, 2023
I claim these people and admit their claim upon me.
from To Free the Captives by Tracy K. Smith
“Communion across the mortal divide,” Smith calls it. The link backwards through time to all who came before, those connected by blood, and those connected by common experience and history.
There is strength in this connection, and a circle of family that transcends family.
I have felt that connection. I have traced my ancestors back centuries. To a man persecuted for his Anabaptist faith, imprisoned and his goods confiscated, his family turned out of their home. To the Swiss Brethren minister, an early settler in the Shenandoah Valley, who was scalped and killed, along with his wife and several children; luckily, my distant grandmother escaped.
Smith traces her ancestors back to the Middle Passage, to slavery, to Sunflower, Alabama where he father was born. Hers were Freed people–not Free–for there is a difference between born to freedom and being granted freedom. Freedom granted can be taken away.
Smith shares her family history and her own story in this luminous memoir. She struggles with the past and shares her concerns for the future awaiting her sons. She responds to the murder of black youth and wonders about America’s future.
This hauntingly beautiful and moving memoir offers revelation and hope for the future.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
from To Free the Captives by Tracy K. Smith
“Communion across the mortal divide,” Smith calls it. The link backwards through time to all who came before, those connected by blood, and those connected by common experience and history.
There is strength in this connection, and a circle of family that transcends family.
I have felt that connection. I have traced my ancestors back centuries. To a man persecuted for his Anabaptist faith, imprisoned and his goods confiscated, his family turned out of their home. To the Swiss Brethren minister, an early settler in the Shenandoah Valley, who was scalped and killed, along with his wife and several children; luckily, my distant grandmother escaped.
Smith traces her ancestors back to the Middle Passage, to slavery, to Sunflower, Alabama where he father was born. Hers were Freed people–not Free–for there is a difference between born to freedom and being granted freedom. Freedom granted can be taken away.
Smith shares her family history and her own story in this luminous memoir. She struggles with the past and shares her concerns for the future awaiting her sons. She responds to the murder of black youth and wonders about America’s future.
This hauntingly beautiful and moving memoir offers revelation and hope for the future.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
February 19, 2026
To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul by Tracy K. Smith is a luminous and urgent meditation on memory, ancestry, and the moral work of national self-examination. Written in the wake of 2020’s reckonings, Smith blends memoir, archival research, and spiritual inquiry to ask what it might mean for America to confront its oldest wounds with honesty and shared responsibility.
Drawing on the history of her own patrilineal line in Sunflower, Alabama, Smith grounds sweeping national questions in intimate family narrative. Her reflections on her grandfather’s return from World War I, and on the freedoms both afforded and denied to her father’s generation, deepen into a broader meditation on Black continuance and resilience. The prose carries the lyric intensity one expects from a former U.S. Poet Laureate, yet it remains grounded in documentary clarity and historical precision.
What distinguishes this work is its insistence that the soul is not merely private but civic. Smith proposes that spiritual practice and moral imagination are tools for tending collective wounds. Rather than offering easy reconciliation, she calls for sustained attention, shared labor, and a willingness to reimagine belonging. To Free the Captives stands as both witness and invitation a deeply personal manifesto that reaches toward a more honest and humane national future.
Drawing on the history of her own patrilineal line in Sunflower, Alabama, Smith grounds sweeping national questions in intimate family narrative. Her reflections on her grandfather’s return from World War I, and on the freedoms both afforded and denied to her father’s generation, deepen into a broader meditation on Black continuance and resilience. The prose carries the lyric intensity one expects from a former U.S. Poet Laureate, yet it remains grounded in documentary clarity and historical precision.
What distinguishes this work is its insistence that the soul is not merely private but civic. Smith proposes that spiritual practice and moral imagination are tools for tending collective wounds. Rather than offering easy reconciliation, she calls for sustained attention, shared labor, and a willingness to reimagine belonging. To Free the Captives stands as both witness and invitation a deeply personal manifesto that reaches toward a more honest and humane national future.
December 30, 2025
These meditations on ancestry, family, and the weight of being Black in America are not to be sped through, but savored. Many passages of Smith's essays benefit from being read aloud for the poetry and flow in her prose. Smith refers to whites as the Free, and Blacks as the Freed - a historical reference which still makes a difference. She writes about her struggles in grad school, in a worsening relationship, the loss of her mother and father, and of returning to the South to reconnect with family. She finds happiness in a second marriage, renewal in the birth of a daughter, and love mixed with fear in raising twin boys. So many moving passages about the souls and spirits living around her. Smith learns to meditate and follow her visions, but her prose is grounded enough that I'm solidly brought along. I want this to be more widely read, and brought up with other visionary Black writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Eddie Glaude, Jr., bell hooks, and Toni Morrison.
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