To Free the Captives

A Plea for the American Soul

By: Tracy K. Smith

Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith

A TIME AND WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • 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 questions: Where are we going as a nation? Where have we been?

©2023 Tracy K. Smith (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith's narrating tone is soft and gentle as she recounts the many questions and frustrations she faces as she pieces together her lineage, examines insidious racism, and confronts oppression.... The beauty of her imagery and the rhythms of her narration make her insights all the more poignant. Her candid openness invites listeners to consider more deeply the painful situations and the individual and collective responsibility we share." (AudioFile)

“Tracy K. Smith is one of the most beautiful and profound writers of our time. I wept and laughed my way through these gorgeous pages. She teaches us how our beloved ancestors remain our protectors and guides, and how—in Black life—past and present merge in the persistence of injustice and the resilience of our ancestral legacies.” —Imani Perry, author of South to America

“Dazzling and exacting. On nearly every page of this book is a phrase or sentence to marvel over, a word (usually an adjective) so unexpectedly apt that it freshens familiar language...'To Free the Captives' is so luscious”—Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

"In her second memoir, Tracy K. Smith breaks free of the bonds of singularity and finds a radical vision of Black kinship...This gathering of souls...this making way for a way, is a new kind of freedom-literature for sure...a memoir with gorgeous lyric flourishes like a poem, and language that entreats us to want to know more."—Dawn Lundy Martin, 4Columns

Liked it.

Slow to embrace but I did. Too thin in places. I like the story lines

Bits and pieces were remarkable

The book failed to grab me. Only bits and pieces were moving. She tells how she changed but the passages about her family were not illuminating.

Fascinating Meditation

A fresh and very personal series of ruminations on racism and its effects on life and relationships and more. Poetically written and presented.