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TO FREE THE CAPTIVES: A PLEA FOR THE AMERICAN SOUL


TRACY K. SMITH

4.15
75 ratings20 reviews
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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?
Show more
GenresNonfictionHistoryMemoirEssaysRaceBiographyAfrican American

...more

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 7, 2023

Book details & editions

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38 people are currently reading
3,618 people want to read

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TRACY K. SMITH

37 books766 followers
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Tracy 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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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

4.15
75 ratings20 reviews
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
William
23 reviews4 followers
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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.
Show more

5 likes
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Abigail Bok
Author 4 books213 followers
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November 19, 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.
Show more

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Teresa
95 reviews
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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.
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3 likes
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Natalie Park
786 reviews
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October 29, 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!
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3 likes
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AndiReads
1,087 reviews113 followers
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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
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2 likes
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Phyllis | Mocha Drop
370 reviews2 followers
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October 28, 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.
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Kat
594 reviews29 followers
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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!
Show more
2023 net-galley


1 like
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Nancy
1,544 reviews374 followers
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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.
Show more
publisher-sent


2 likes
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Kym
596 reviews1 follower
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November 13, 2023
As a fan of Tracy K. Smith’s writing, I was eager to read an ARC copy of her
just-released memoir, To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul,
published on November 7, 2023.

I found To Free the Captives to be a poignant and beautifully written personal
manifesto. I was moved by Tracy K. Smith’s vulnerable discoveries, and grateful
to have the opportunity to learn from them. I will be forever changed by her
concepts of “free” and “freed.”

Highly recommended, and especially for those interested in acknowledging our
shared past and seeking a healing way forward .

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for providing an
advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book was
published on November 7, 2023.

5 stars
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arc


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Tonja
271 reviews
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November 28, 2023
Tracy begins by tracing her ancestors lives with the assistance of the census
bureau. She weaves their lives with the history of Blacks in America. With her
father and uncles having served in the military, she delved into the treatment
of Blacks in the military. Black men fighting for their country being treated as
inferior and second class. I found it thought provoking as to the relative term
of “freedom” and how free we as Black people are and can really ever be.
She writes with much understanding, respect and love for her mother and father
and their sacrifices to build for the next generation.
I really appreciated the glimpse into her personal life and struggles. In
several areas I recognized my self and experiences. It was an honest, thought
provoking, and hopeful read. I received a free book from the publisher. All
views are my own.
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Abby W
67 reviews9 followers
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May 21, 2023
Tracy K Smith masterfully traces her ancestry and heritage in this meditation on
American history, family, memory and the ways all of those are connected in “To
Free The Captives.” I have nothing critical to say about this book; it is so
well crafted and organized. I love Smith’s poetry, which you can hear even in
the melody of her prose. I highlighted many, many lines in this copy because so
much of it bowled me over - I’ll probably have to buy this when it comes out so
I can mark it up again.
Thank you so much Knopf and NetGalley for the advanced review copy!!
Show more
advance-copy


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Peter
495 reviews48 followers
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November 29, 2023
This is, at once, a reflective look at the author’s ancestors and a plea for a
future where all Americans can see themselves as equally free rather than being
divided between the two extremes of the free and the freed.

‘To Free the Captives’ has the definite touch of a poet’s writing style and
ability to evoke both emotion and contemplation through the use of language. The
book is part autobiography, part history, part psychology and part manifesto.

An essential read for all Americans; indeed, for all citizens of the world.
Show more

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Ryan Harris
30 reviews3 followers
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December 3, 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.
Show more

Like
Comment


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jason Thomas
26 reviews7 followers
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December 4, 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.
Show more

Like
Comment


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ashley Jackson
26 reviews2 followers
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December 4, 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.
Show more

Like
Comment


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bobbie
570 reviews1 follower
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November 12, 2023
Tracy Smith weaves together stories of her life and family with the broader
African American experience in this beautifully written, reflective memoir.

african-americans-history biography-and-memoir


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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heather
75 reviews3 followers
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November 16, 2023
Eloquently and poignant.


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Diana
406 reviews
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December 4, 2023
3.5 ⭐️


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Rich Johnson
260 reviews
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December 17, 2023
Audio

2023


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Ann
1,323 reviews3 followers
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December 15, 2023
Smith examines her personal history in an attempt to come to terms with our
current social and political climate. Through research, personal memories, and
examination of spiritual practices, she searches for understanding and guidance
as the country grapples with persistent and insidious racism against Black
Americans. The juxtaposition of her family’s stories with the Black experience
in the U.S. feels like a journey toward a greater understanding,


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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews

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