MARC Record from Library of Congress

LEADER: 03755cam a2200493 i 4500
001 2014026185
003 DLC
005 20150430082217.0
008 150112s2015 nyu 000 0aeng
010 $a 2014026185
020 $a9780307962669 (cloth)
020 $z9780307962676 (ebook)
040 $aDLC$beng$cDLC$erda$dDLC
042 $apcc
043 $an-us---
050 00 $aPS3619.M5955$bZ46 2015
082 00 $a818/.603$aB$223
084 $aBIO026000$aBIO022000$aBIO007000$2bisacsh
100 1 $aSmith, Tracy K.
245 10 $aOrdinary light :$ba memoir /$cTracy K. Smith.
250 $aFirst edition.
264 1 $aNew York :$bAlfred A. Knopf,$c2015.
300 $a349 pages ;$c22 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$bnc$2rdacarrier
500 $a"This is a Borzoi book"--Title page verso.
520 2 $a"A memoir about the author's coming of age as she grapples with her identity as an artist, her family's racial history, and her mother's death from cancer"--$cProvided by publisher.
520 2 $a"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet: a deeply moving memoir that explores coming-of-age and the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, faith, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter. Tracy K. Smith had a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel, to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights movement. These dizzying juxtapositions--between her family's past, her own comfortable present, and the promise of her future--will eventually compel her to act on her passions for love and 'ecstatic possibility,' and her desire to become a writer. But when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, which she says is part of God's plan, Tracy must learn a new way to love and look after someone whose beliefs she has outgrown. Written with a poet's precision and economy, this gorgeous, probing kaleidoscope of self and family offers us a universal story of belonging and becoming, and the ways we find and lose ourselves amid the places we call home"--$cProvided by publisher.
505 0 $aPrologue: The Miracle -- I. My Book House -- Wild Kingdom -- Spirits and Demons -- Kin -- Leroy -- A Home in the World -- II. MGM -- Little Feats of Daring -- Total Adventure -- Book a Big Band -- A Necessary Rite -- Humor -- III. Uninvisible -- The Night Stalker -- Hot & Fast -- Shame -- Mother -- Epistolary -- Positive -- IV. Kathleen -- Something Better -- The Woman at the Well -- A Strange Thing to Do -- I, Too -- Testimony -- V. Another Dialect of the Soul -- Something Powerful at Her Side -- A Strange After -- Abide -- Clearances -- Epilogue: Dear God.
600 10 $aSmith, Tracy K.
600 10 $aSmith, Tracy K.$xFamily.
650 0 $aAfrican American women authors$vBiography.
650 0 $aMothers$zUnited States$xDeath.
650 0 $aMothers and daughters$zUnited States.
650 0 $aComing of age$zUnited States.
650 0 $aHome$xPsychological aspects.
650 0 $aAfrican Americans$xRace identity.
650 0 $aIdentity (Psychology)$zUnited States.
650 0 $aPoets$xPsychology.
650 7 $aBIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.$2bisacsh
650 7 $aBIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women.$2bisacsh
650 7 $aBIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary.$2bisacsh
856 42 $3Cover image$u9780307962669.jpg