In a New Memoir, Tracy K. Smith Connects Her Life to a Bigger Picture

Since her first book of poetry, “The Body’s Question,” was published in 2003, Tracy K. Smith has been a writer to watch. Her poems and prose are forceful, intelligent and musical, earning her a Whiting Award and a Pulitzer Prize, among other accolades.

Smith’s latest book, “To Free the Captives,” is a different kind of work altogether — both a memoir and an examination of race relations in America. Here the former poet laureate writes about her life as a microcosm of the Black American experience. Initially, I expected an examination of our current political moment. But when Smith opened with a look at her own family’s history, I thought that a reasonable way into such an examination; being Black myself, I already knew that any story of generations of a Black family in America is a story of America itself.

Read more from The New York Times here.