Feel Free by Zadie Smith

"I find myself to be radically discontinuous with myself." 

Feel Free is a phenomenal round up of Zadie Smith's articles and essays over the last ten or so years. Not all of the pieces were for me personally (specifically the heavy dose of highbrow lit crit), but man, the rest really struck me down to my core. So whether you identify as a writer, reader, artist, musician, historian philosopher, millennial, gen-Xer, black, white, or mixed: there's something that will speak to you, trust me. Together the essays weave a rich tapestry of voices, all varying shades of Smith. Deeply personal experiences presented alongside stoic, critical analyses. She waxes poetic on the importance of libraries, how technology shifts reality, pluralism and the significance of race, why she was terrified of writing in the first person and oh yeah this one time she burned down her Italian apartment. Seriously, something for everyone.

I went with the audiobook (shout-out to narrator Nikki Amuka-Bird for knocking it out of the fucking park) not thinking about the fact that listening to a book makes it super tedious to bookmark or make note of beautiful passages. Soon what started as me googling to find a few direct quotes snowballed into a quest to find all 31+ essays. Turns out, of the essays that had been previously published, most are available online! Some live behind paywalls, some are available as previews but ultimately require a subscription, and some are freebies open to the public. One's even in German so viel Glück damit...

I didn't collect all of these links to stick it to the publishing industry or help people bypass checking out the book for themselves. Just thought it'd be nice to compile the works into one easy-to-access spot for anyone else wanting to reference the texts digitally. Our benevolent overlords at Google Books have a ctrl+f-able preview available but it's not really the same.

PART I: IN THE WORLD
Northwest London Blues
Elegy for a Country's Seasons
Fences: A Brexit Diary
On Optimism and Despair

PART II: IN THE AUDIENCE
Generation Why?
The House that Hova Built
Brother from Another Mother
Some Notes on Attunement
Windows on the Will: Anomalisa
Dance Lessons for Writers

PART III: IN THE GALLERY 
Killing Orson Welles at Midnight
Crazy They Call me
A Bird of Few Words: Narrative Mysteries in the Paintings of Lynette-Yiadom Boakye
Getting in and Getting Out
MIA: Flaming June, Alte Frau by Balthasar Denner, Mark Bradford's Niagra, The Tattered Ruins of the Map: On Sarah Sze's Centrifuge

PART IV: ON THE BOOKSHELF
Crash by JG Ballard
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
Notes on NW
The Harper's Columns
The I Who is not Me (couldn't find the transcript, but this is an article about it)

PART V: FEEL FREE
Life-Writing
The Bathroom & Meet Justin Bieber! (couldn't find the transcript, but this is an article about it)
Man Versus Corpse
Love in the Gardens 
Find your Beach
Joy
MIA: The Shadow of Ideas

And while I was scouring the web for EVERYTHING ZADIE I came across two beautiful commencement addresses that I may as well throw into this heap of links:

2014 New School Commencement Address
2016 Grinnell College Commencement Address

Happy Reading!

If you've found any of the ones I'm missing are easily accessible and I'm just dumb, drop me a comment and I'll add it in!

// and now a guide to my header collage//

i.e. in which essays you will find reference to these lovely people/characters
Also is it just me or do Phillip Roth and Denner's Alte Frau look like they're related?

Joni Mitchell > Notes on Attunement
Scowling Old Woman >  Alte Frau by Balthasar Denner
Billie Holiday > Crazy They Call Me
Michael Jackson, Prince, Beyonce > Dance Lessons for Writers
Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network > Generation Why?
Harold Lloyd hanging off a clock in Safety Last! > Killing Orson Welles at Midnight
Key & Peele > Brother from Another Mother
Man with bird, painting titled Mercy over Matter > A Bird of Few Words
Girl lounging in an orange dress > Flaming June
Jay-Z > The House that Hova Built
Zadie Smith looking gorgeous > All of em!
Phillip Roth > The I Who Isn't Me
Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out > Getting In and Out


Feel Free: Essays
by Zadie Smith
Published: February 2018

Freshwater

Freshwater: a novel
by: Akwaeke Emezi
To be published: Feb 2018

Seamlessly weaving a Nigerian mythos of mischievous gods (Ọgbanje) with a Western understanding of psychopathology, this breakout novel burrows into the experience of trauma, self-awareness, and spiritual awakening.  The deeply surreal story is narrated by a girl with "one foot on the other side" and the chorus of selves that reside in her fractured mind. Somehow despite the extremely heavy and personal subject matter, Emezi's narrative voices are as entertaining as they are painfully relatable.

5 out of 5 stars: What a fucking fantastic, unique read. I knew next to nothing going in and honestly want to cut this review short to extend the same courtesy to anyone else who may happen upon my page. That said, I read it on the tails of my vacation to the Yucatán peninsula, where I had the opportunity to learn more about the mysticism of the Mayans and their regard for their wind serpent god Kulkulkan. It's interesting how certain animals or representations resonate similarly with different ancient cultures. The Igbo and the Mayans may have been separated by a continent and ocean, but they both revered the power of the serpentine life force.

// I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

PS: If you liked this you should also check out:

•  What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, by Lesley Nneka Arimah

We Were Eight Years In Power

We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy
by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
To Be Published: October 2017

We Were Eight Years in Power is a compilation of eight essays Coates published with The Atlantic. Each essay is preceded by an introductory chapter that explains why he wrote the piece, what was going on in his life, and how his perspective has changed since it was published. These "blog post-like" tidbits have an almost memoir-like quality to them, offering behind-the-scenes insight into the writing process and allowing Coates an opportunity to vent frustrations unconstrained by the more diplomatic, expository tone of the essays.

Inevitably this book will be compared to Coates' award-winning Between the World and Me as they both ruminate on racial tension in the United States. But where Between the World and Me is deeply personal, raw, poetic and often bombastically esoteric, We Were Eight Years in Power feels more academic. Beautifully written and immensely powerful, it marries heavily-researched longform journalism and unapologetic sermonizing. The essays cover a wide swathe of topics that include meditations on what it means to elect a black president, brief biographies of Malcom X and the Obamas, a case for reparations, and an appeal to recognize the continuous role white supremacy has played in our nation's history.

The title of the work references a post-Civil-War speech given by a member of the Reconstruction legislature in South Carolina. Yet, the titular "We" also echoes modern-day citizens hoping for meaningful change in the area of race relations. The parallels abound, as we too are in the midst of an intense backlash and political tidal change following the wake of progress. As we all know, those who refuse to acknowledge history are doomed to repeat it.

5 out of 5 stars: As someone who hasn't really been following the prolific Ta-Nehisi Coates beyond his last bestseller, all of the essays were new and exciting. Veteran readers of the Atlantic may not be as impressed. Still, the reflection chapters do bring something new to the table and really tie it all together. Come what may, I will definitely be referencing this book for years to come.

// I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Moving collection of essays passed from father to son on community, culture, and growing up black in America. Coates takes us through his formative years, navigating the unspoken language of the streets, and how to abide and thrive in a violent world. He describes experiences at his historically black alma mater, his "Mecca", grateful for the safe haven to cultivate curiosity and investigate the rich heritage of African Americans. Perhaps most importantly, he refuses to shy away from the more weighty discussions of police brutality and the history of slavery and oppression of the West.

4.5 out of 5 stars: Some passages are borderline esoteric, but on the whole, this is a beautiful, lyrical, accessible read. The audiobook read by the author, which I really enjoyed.

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky 
by Lesley Nneka Arimah

What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky is a collection of stories set in Nigeria that explore the bleakness of existence, the infusion of ancient fables in a cultural narrative, and a disquietingly dystopian brand of magical-realism. The stories themselves could stand alone*, but as a well-crafted collection their emotional weight is magnified. Though each of the stories individually grapples with grief, self-preservation, and mending the fabric of torn families, each reaches a gnawing depth somehow more heartbreaking than the last.

* One of the stories was independently published in the New Yorker (Oct 2015), "Who Will Greet You At Home" and gives a taste of the collection's more fantastical side.

5 out of 5 stars: I love me some morbid reality, toss in some ancient parables and post-apocalyptic futures and I am beyond sold.