Freedom: Essays

by Zinzi Clemmons

“Incredibly perceptive. . . . A stunning testimony from a talented writer who strips off false facades with honesty and vulnerability, and leaves us with a searing ‘Can you build a nation based on love?’”
—mónica teresa ortiz, BookPage (starred review)

ONE OF LIT HUB'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2026

A radically vulnerable and virtuosic inquiry into the pursuit of freedom and the interminable nature of struggle, from the award-winning author of What We Lose

Weaving personal reflections with piercing insight and expansive vision across nine brilliant essays, Zinzi Clemmons explores the complexities of the elusive concept of freedom. As the daughter of a South African mother and a Trinidadian America father, she recounts growing up in the largely white, affluent town of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania—and her frequent travels to Johannesburg, where the lofty promise of freedom was all around her. Coming of age amidst the euphoria of South Africa's first all-race elections, she grapples with the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the shattered hope in the wake of the Obama era. Clemmons critiques the entrenched inequalities that haunt both countries, from the tragic loss of a childhood friend to the violence that often befalls women who have the audacity to be free.

In a deft mix of memoir, family history, criticism, and reportage, drawing on a vast range of material from Joan Didion to James Baldwin, political analysis and history to Clemmons’s own experiences across the globe, Freedom is an incendiary exploration of race, sex, class, and inheritance. In elegiac prose, Clemmons trains her discerning eye on American institutions and mythologies, probing the bounds of liberation and autonomy to interrogate our most enduring quest—the relentless pursuit of freedom for all.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, History, South Africa, Adult, Biography Memoir

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 9, 2026

About the author

Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. A graduate of Brown and Columbia, her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, The Paris Review Daily, Transition, and The Common.

She is a co-founder and former publisher of Apogee Journal, a contributing editor to Literary Hub, and deputy editor for Phoneme Media.

She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction.

Clemmons lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to collect every Goodreads badge this year, which is a very normal and reasonable thing to do if you’ve ever looked at a reading challenge and thought, “Yes, but what if I made this unnecessarily difficult?” And that is how I ended up reading Freedom: Essays.

This was my first time reading Zinzi Clemmons. I went in ready for a collection that would challenge me, which sounds much more noble than admitting I was chasing a badge. These essays are full of conversations worth having about race, grief, power, identity, and the complicated ways personal experiences intersect with larger systems.

Unfortunately, engaging urgent conversations and creating a compelling collection are two very different things. If only Goodreads had a badge for “books that made you agree with the premise but argue with the execution.”

There are moments where Clemmons absolutely delivers, especially in “Freedom Pt. 2,” but overall this collection left me feeling more frustrated than moved.

The biggest issue for me was that many of the essays felt either familiar or overly dependent on emotional weight (coming from someone who loves emotional weight). Some of the political commentary landed in territory I’ve seen explored many times before, and I found myself thinking, “Where are we going from here?” I wanted more complexity, more digging, and more of the uncomfortable gray areas that make essays like these so compelling.

The political sections were where I felt the biggest disconnect. Critiquing institutions, questioning leadership, and demanding accountability are important. In fact, I’m usually the person asking for more of those conversations, not less. These are conversations we absolutely should be having. I don’t think any political figure or institution is above criticism.

What I struggled with was less the criticism itself and more how those critiques function beyond the page. Clemmons makes a distinction between the failures and limitations of center-left leadership and the openly racist, reactionary politics of Trumpism. Those are not the same thing, and they should never be treated as interchangeable.

But criticism doesn’t exist apart from the context in which it is received. When critical thinking and media literacy are under increasing strain (to say the least), writers of this caliber have to consider how arguments are interpreted and used. A critique of a flawed institution can be taken out of context by people who aren’t engaging with the larger argument and instead used to reinforce cynicism, disengagement, or the belief that there is no meaningful difference between imperfect progress and active regression.

That distinction has real consequences.

In a political moment where Trumpism and plans like Project 2025 represent a very real threat to rights and protections, I wanted more clarity around how these critiques move us forward. Challenging imperfect systems is necessary. Calling out failures is necessary. But for a collection so focused on freedom and liberation, I wanted a stronger sense of what comes next, what we build, not just what we dismantle.

The bigger frustration is that these essays often identify problems without fully developing the ideas they raise. The tensions Clemmons explores are worth pursuing, but too often I felt like the essays moved on before fully examining the contradictions within them.

The more difficult part of the collection was the way Clemmons incorporates other people’s tragedies into her reflections. Stories of violence, suicide, and personal loss appear throughout the essays, but too often they felt less like fully explored experiences and more like the foundation holding up a larger argument. I struggled with the feeling that these individuals’ pain was being asked to carry ideas that weren’t always fully developed.

The essay about a former student’s suicide was the clearest example for me. Clemmons connects the loss to her reflections on teaching Joan Didion and confronting Didion’s casual racism. I understood the larger conversation she was trying to have about education, responsibility, and structural racism, but the connection never fully came together for me. I kept wondering if there was a way to explore those ideas without placing someone else’s tragedy at the center of the discussion.

The strongest essay in the collection, for me, was “Freedom Pt. 2.” Here, Clemmons is writing from her own experience, and the result feels much more immediate and powerful. Her reflections on speaking publicly about harassment are controlled, thoughtful, and emotionally honest. It’s the essay where the balance between personal experience and larger cultural critique works best, and it demonstrates exactly how compelling this collection could have been.

Ultimately, Freedom: Essays is a collection I wanted to connect with more than I did. Clemmons is clearly engaging with difficult and necessary subjects, and I appreciate her willingness to enter conversations that many people avoid.

My frustration was that I often found myself more interested in the questions the essays raised than in the arguments they ultimately made. Clemmons is engaging with subjects that demand depth, conviction, and careful examination, but too often I felt like the essays opened doors to deeper exploration without fully walking through them.

There are flashes of a writer with a sharp wit and a lot to say, but I was left wishing the collection had followed its own ideas further.

[Abby Paulnock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very important and well crafted read! These essays perfectly weave personal narrative with facts and theoretical frameworks. As someone who recently moved to Philadelphia and works in education in Delaware County, I was shocked and enlightened by many of the stories surrounding the local school districts. Some of these experiences were also familiar growing up in the Midwest.

I was drawn in by the author’s voice. It felt conversational in a way. Meaningful and heartbreaking information was conveyed honestly. The order of the essays is arranged in a thoughtful manner that allows the reader to get a sense of the author and their background before diving deeper into more complex theories about race. This is, by far, one of my most meaningful reads this year.

[Viktoria Chipova · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 ⭐ | Freedom: Essays
Author: Zinzi Clemmons

Status: DNF (Read 55 pages) | Mediocre / Unfocused Essay Collection

The Verdict: Insightful Cultural Commentary Stalled by Fragmented Pacing and Low Urgency
Following her acclaimed debut novel What We Lose, Zinzi Clemmons’ essay collection Freedom sets out to explore identity, autonomy, politics, and modern social friction. While Clemmons clearly possesses an intelligent perspective and sharp cultural instincts, the opening 55 pages suffer from inconsistent narrative momentum and scattered thematic focus. Rather than delivering punchy, tightly constructed arguments, the prose frequently meanders through loose personal anecdotes and theoretical musings that fail to build a compelling hook. Walking away at page 55 is a clean, pragmatic reading choice for a book that hovers strictly in mediocre territory.

Why it lands at an average 3/5 (DNF at page 55):
Meandering and Fragmented Structure: By page 55, the collection struggles to establish a unified rhythm or clear thesis. The transitions between personal reflection and broader sociological critique often feel disjointed, making the reading experience feel like browsing disparate notebook entries rather than engaging with cohesive, high-impact essays.

Low Argumentative Velocity: The prose lacks the sharp, urgent bite needed to make contemporary essay collections truly grip the reader. Too much time is spent circling ideas and setting up context without landing decisive intellectual or emotional payoffs.

Inconsistent Depth: While certain passages demonstrate strong line-level observational talent, others skim over complex topics on a surface level, leaving the reader wanting either deeper analytical rigor or a more raw personal narrative.

Why it sits at 3/5 instead of lower:
Clemmons is an undeniably capable writer. Her prose is articulate, clean, and occasionally sparks genuine moments of cultural clarity and vulnerability. The essays aren't poorly written; they simply lack the structural tightness, speed, and narrative grip required to justify pushing through the entire collection.

Final Thought: A solid 3/5. Freedom: Essays offers a decent collection of ideas that ultimately struggles under loose structural discipline and sluggish pacing. A readable but thoroughly middle-of-the-road volume that doesn't demand finishing when your reading queue demands higher efficiency.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

have to agree completely with another 3 star review that was posted here, thoroughly written.

while i believe the author’s messages and thoughts are vital and grounded, the narrative was often unfocused and sometimes hard to follow.

although it doesn’t change anything, i do want to point out that the david duke pecan co (which is now closed) in mississippi is not affiliated with the infamous david duke. the pecan company was unfortunately named after a completely different david duke, with no familial or known relation to the david duke of the kkk. i don’t say this defend mississippi against racist claims, but to say that this addition to the book is misleading. like i said, it doesn’t change anything. the misunderstanding doesn’t mean that the author wrongly accuses mississippi of being a place where racism persists. simply that the author mistakingly accuses a now-closed pecan company of honoring a figure of the kkk.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I was surprised. I never quite know what to expect from essays or commentary. I think I was looking for something closer to the writing of Christina Sharpe, or Isabel Wilkerson, but this body of work, by necessity, had to be different from either of theirs, because this collection isn't just personal, it's autobiographical. It's a different starting point: from the specific to the general, instead of from the general to the specific. All three authors have overlapping experiences, I guarantee that. That's what makes each approach so interesting. They are interrogating many of the same questions and much of the same history. 

We are immediately introduced to the complexity of the subject of freedom, via the echoes in the author's own life. Clemmons' experiences of personal loss run parallel to collective loss of gains in socio-political and economic black power. This slipping away has been, on both counts, something she could see coming, but could not stop. The first kind were personal physical manifestations, but the second type was born not just of continued racism, but also at least partially from group concessions made, and therefore constraints created upon, freedom that was hard-won. Equality that stops well short of equity, has a cost that must be paid eventually, and unfortunately, ends up exacted both unevenly and unfairly from those least situated to pay it.

The author's approach is intersectional: What does it mean to be free, as a member of the African-Caribbean diaspora, as an African American, as a woman, in a modern world still reeling from, and still refusing to confront, its perpetual colonialist posture? if inherited trauma is intergenerationally genetically encoded, what happens when the source is from three countries at the same time?

What causes freedom to crumble or decay? The military-industrial complex is one of the biggest contributors to freedom's erosion, but there are other accomplices, mostly disguised as ways to "keep us safe."

As expansive and inclusive as the author's definition of freedom is, her presentation is remarkably conversational and straightforward. She takes care not to overuse academic terminology, because she isn't trying to impress us with her intellectual bona fides. She's trying to impress upon us critical points about the nature of freedom, and especially which factors involved explain why freedom hasn't worked out for everyone.

Clemmons reminds of concepts that we have always known but have not always examined. For instance, the state of a structured system of inequity is more important than whether it is enforced officially by law, or unofficially by tradition. 

We're never going to create a better future until we reckon honestly and completely with the past. The suffrage movement, for instance, purposely excluded black women. Much of the Civil Rights movement aimed to keep the patriarchy in place. Women and girls were told to wait their turn, to be patient. They're still waiting.

Too much of colonialist history has been defanged of its brutality. No one wants to be reminded that their privilege was born of cruelty, and is upheld by threats and overt state-sanctioned violence. The author correctly asserts that it's the reason why the TV adaptation of Native Son was portrayed in no more of an upsetting way than say, the story of Sounder. 

Important topics discussed in a voice that will not be dismissed, disparaged, or stifled.

[Kimiya AB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again reading about the abuse of humanity on eachother
race or gender or body...
how can we talk about freedom knowing any type of difference in us can cause another person to give themselves the right of assaulting, verbally, physically or psychologically...

[Claire Keck-Burke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally, I never know how to rate essay collections. Often, the essay collections I read already reinforce what I think, but Zinzi Clemmons' work is really well-done and helped me reckon with the fact that I engage a little too much in white feminism, despite my beliefs otherwise. This unlearning process to better understand and empathize with people from different backgrounds is hard and certainly not the most fun thing in the world, but it's important, and I'm glad to be educated in things I didn't quite get

Also she likes doing oral history, and I also like doing oral history, so that automatically put her in the top ratings

[Kierstin Acuna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this on audiobook and the narration was very monotone. While the topics covered were important, the discussion felt surface level and I had a hard time connecting all the anecdotes to the larger points the author was trying to make. It also felt repetitive at times, like the essays hadn’t been adapted to read sequentially in book form, but I don’t read a lot of essay collections so maybe that’s normal.

[Darby Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75⭐️

[Sinyee · Rating 5 out of 5]

An honest and beautifully written collection of essays which speaks to the disillusioned state of our personal and societal consciousness and how we got here.

[Sam Cheng · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clemmons’s Freedom: Essays underscores the costly labor behind attaining freedom in twenty-first-century America, using personal anecdotes as the backbone of her chapters and weaving in socio-political-economic criticism. She focuses on the history and current happenings of Swarthmore, PA, Clemmons’s childhood neighborhood, her background as a daughter of a mother who immigrated from South Africa and a Black father, and links these to her present-day work in academia.
In Swan Song For The Republic, her expansive vision for the African diaspora sees more democracy as the answer to Western liberal democracies’ militarism and hypercapitalism. In Freedom, Clemmons narrates growing up and assimilating in Philly’s inner city, emphasizing the recession and return of oppression as a woman and person of color. This continues in Chasing Robbie as she memorializes a classmate from Chester who was murdered. Hailed as the Birmingham of the North, the impoverished city faced de facto segregation following integration and White Flight, leaving the Black kids under-resourced and with an unequal education.

Shifting from her childhood and home in the Northeast, Clemmons’s later essays zoom out. She addresses how Biden’s Democratic Party lets down Black communities in America in The Suburban Strategy. Being an educator in predominantly white spaces on the West Coast, her new home, she navigates empowering students who are people of color and their struggle with mental health in Home Going. In Freedom PT. 2, Clemmon’s reflections on MeToo fold in her personal experience with sexual assault, harassment, and the consequences of speaking out against the writer who kissed her and prevented her from getting work.

Clemmons shines most when her unflinching essays push readers to view the issues with hope. In this way, her vision for freedom in America seems well-adjusted.

My thanks to Viking and NetGalley for an ARC.

[Sam Bizarrus]

I found this collection really disappointing, both because Zinzi Clemmons' debut novel was so spectacular, and because the essays in this collection were (with the exception of "Freedom PT. 2") either rote (another takedown of Biden, ...yawn) or vampiric. The latter quality demands more explanation: several times in this collection Clemmons would offer an account of someone else's tragedy (a victim of gun violence, a suicide, etc.) and braid it into an narrative as a kind of aesthetic centerpiece. A young student's suicide forces her to reflect on...how she taught (or failed to teach) Joan Didion? Sorry, what the actual fuck? She lays a corpse before her audience and muses about how she couldn't, in the moment, adequately unpack Didion's casual racism. Surely, there was a better way to balance pedagogy and the lasting impacts of structural racism and young adult despair, no? It is as if the ideas she presents here are not sufficiently developed (how might, for example, a careful pedagogue teach Didion?), so instead she offers blood sacrifice, as a tactic to make her work more pressing. But it all rings false, in part because the chasm between her agency as a writer, and the agency of these bodies she lays out before her readers, is so hauntingly vast. What can we know about them? What can she?

[Gregg Preston · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are immediately introduced to the complexity of the subject of freedom, via the echoes in the author's own life. Clemmons' experiences of personal loss run parallel to collective loss of gains in socio-political and economic black power. This slipping away has been, on both counts, something she could see coming, but could not stop. The first kind were personal physical manifestations, but the second type was born not just of continued racism, but also at least partially from group concessions made, and therefore constraints created upon, freedom that was hard-won. Equality that stops well short of equity, has a cost that must be paid eventually, and unfortunately, ends up exacted both unevenly and unfairly from those least situated to pay it.

The author's approach is intersectional: What does it mean to be free, as a member of the African-Caribbean diaspora, as an African American, as a woman, in a modern world still reeling from, and still refusing to confront, its perpetual colonialist posture? if inherited trauma is intergenerationally genetically encoded, what happens when the source is from three countries at the same time?

What causes freedom to crumble or decay? The military-industrial complex is one of the biggest contributors to freedom's erosion, but there are other accomplices, mostly disguised as ways to "keep us safe."

As expansive and inclusive as the author's definition of freedom is, her presentation is remarkably conversational and straightforward. She takes care not to overuse academic terminology, because she isn't trying to impress us with her intellectual bona fides. She's trying to impress upon us critical points about the nature of freedom, and especially which factors involved explain why freedom hasn't worked out for everyone.

Clemmons reminds of concepts that we have always known but have not always examined. For instance, the state of a structured system of inequity is more important than whether it is enforced officially by law, or unofficially by tradition.

[Darkowaa]

TW - ass*ult, r*pe, su*cide abound

I can’t rate this book. I can’t rate it because these essays are Zinzi Clemmons’ truth. She’s very vulnerable in most of these essays, re-telling different personal episodes of assault - in the US and in South Africa. She also tells the (traumatic/tragic) stories of some of her loved ones - Robbie (in the essay- Chasing Robbie), her late grandparents, her late Mother, her husband etc. The spirit of this collection is pretty sombre. Clemmons later describing herself as an Afropessimist makes a lot of sense. Violence and grief play huge roles in this collection - especially the violence in Pennsylvania and violence in South Africa, where Clemmons is from.

In the essay Freedom, Pt 2, readers become reacquainted with the 2018 scandal Clemmons was caught up in, involving writer J*not D*az. She doesn't mention him directly in the essay, but if you followed the drama surrounding Diaz during that time, you'd know the scandal in this essay is about him. It was quite painful to read how the aftermath of Clemmons speaking out against the abuse affected her as a writer. The PTSD she faced really highlights what victims go through when they finally speak up.

This collection is basically Zinzi Clemmons letting out a deep breath and freeing herself of all the adverse things she and her loved ones have endured. It's heavy. But I hope she feels free now.

[Franny M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have enjoyed Zinzi's writing since Lenny Letter, and I was so excited to read her new essays. This collection did not disappoint. As an African-American, it was fascinating to see a writer compare and connect the black experience in America to the struggle for racial equality in post-apartheid South Africa. It reflected my frustration and disappointment as a millennial with a lot of the false promises of hope and change in the future I was given. Reading this collection in a second Trump administration, where white supremacists are emboldened and in power, and the government is being so welcoming to racist white South African's who claim a white genocide, it was just what I needed.

Thank you, NetGalley and Viking, for the ARC!

[Susie Dumond · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful collection of personal essays exploring the concept of freedom. "Freedom Pt. II" is the essay that stuck with me the most, telling the story of how Zinzi Clemmons was sexually harassed by her Pulitzer Prize-winning grad school professor and later went public about the abuse during the Me Too movement, only to have her credibility challenged and likely her career harmed because of it. Reading this collection, it hurts to think about how many more books by Clemmons we'd probably have if she'd hadn't been villainized by her abuser. I hope we get another book from her soon — fiction or nonfiction, she can do it all!

[Christy Razzano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clemmons takes us on her journey of understanding herself. Coming from the complicated and fraught background of being mixed race in South Africa, Clemmons family moves to the US only to run into similar racism in a different shape. She talks us through family dynamics and discrimination at both personal, local, and national levels. She also talks through the grief of losing her mother and friend. And the grief, both personal and communal, surrounding sexual violence. I appreciate that she has used her voice to amplify sexual misconduct. Her voice matters and can continue to light a path forward for other women. We still have a lot of work to do.

[Grace Seabrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I believe the author’s messages and thoughts are vital and grounded, the narrative was often unfocused and sometimes hard to follow.

Although it doesn’t change anything, I want to point out that the David Duke Pecan Co. (now closed) in Mississippi is not affiliated with the infamous David Duke. The pecan company was unfortunately named after a completely different David Duke, with no familial or known relation to the David Duke of the kkk. I don’t say this to defend Mississippi against racist claims, but to say that this addition to the book is misleading. like i said, it doesn’t change anything.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was not an easy read, for sure. It wasn’t quite what I expected - the essay format didn’t feel fully clear to me. And this was a rare occurrence where I felt like I wish I was reading a physical copy of the book rather than listening on audiobook. The book is so raw it made me uncomfortable but I’m glad for that. We are close in age but obviously have very different experiences of life. But it also was a good reminder of how important real feminism is and how much commonality we have as women in this world.

[Kevin Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zinzi Clemmons is an undeniably talented writer, but I found The Freedom Essays both too broad and too shallow to truly connect with.

Even when writing about traumatic events in her life, Clemmons maintains a certain distance, perhaps as a trauma response or as an act of self-preservation. The resulting essays feel more like unpacking than unburdening, more often like objective reportage than intimate reflection.

In the end, I was left with the feeling that this essay collection was more necessary, and perhaps more therapeutic, for the author to write than it was for me to read.

[Dania Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a very hard time with this book and almost did not finish.

One huge positive was learning about the nuances of Afropessimism.

What I struggled with was the feeling that the narrator doesn’t share the whole story…that the truth of events is not fully explored (even by herself, to herself). It’s unsettling because these topics are heavy, important and critical — but her navigation of them feels extremely curated and, at times, dishonest.

[Rolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful collection of personal essays on race in America and South Africa. As someone who worked in Mozambique and traveled through South Africa a fair amount, the sections on South Africa were very interesting. The essay on the author’s experiences with sexual harassment in her MFA and from famous writers was the one that most stuck with me several days after reading.

[Huey Rey Fischer García · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Clemmons’s essays. She has had such an interesting life and weaves personal experiences with historical and social contexts to leave the reader thinking and almost feeling her thoughts. I did need to Google a lot after finishing the book because I had never heard of her or The Author (true identity on Google) prior to this book. Chasing Robbie was incredibly moving, frustrating.

[Christie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounding up from 3.5 stars. I liked some of the essays here, especially the more personal ones. I would have liked more examination of the 2024 election, after getting some thoughts on both the 2016 and 2020 elections in some of these essays, although I know at least some of the essays were probably largely written before then.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But something is stirring in this country. There’s a name on the lips of our friends.”


This book of essays is possibly being underestimated by readers. The writing is sharp; the opinions expressed are crucial. I hope more people pick up this book.


“The meek shall inherit society’s contempt.”

[S. Ayleen Edwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s an important book, with important stories that should be told. It’s possible that it dragged for me because I listened to it and it’s not always great for the author to read their own work. Never underestimate how helpful a trained voice actor can be for your audiobook.

[Matt Kratz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading the essays

[Bridgette · Rating 5 out of 5]

*well-written and essays are easy to read
*educational - a powerful learning experience
*impactful and insightful messages
*highly recommend

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear, strong story about race, sexual assault and being a voice for others.

[Miranda Noonan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5