Ordinary Light

A Memoir

By: Tracy K. Smith

Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith has 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.

©2015 Tracy K. Smith (P)2015 Recorded Books

Simply spoken - poetic

An honest memoir from the youngest child of an American
Family - beautifully read and not easy to stop push on audible. I felt calm as I listened. I wanted to meet this woman and know more.

Beautiful

Amazing. Heartfelt. Intelligent. Relatable. Listening to this book felt in so many ways like someone else telling the story of my own life- despite the differences in my life to hers she is able to describe the human experience of family, personal growth, ignorance and loss with tact and poetic depth.

Compelling

The complexity of a mother-daughter relationship is at the center of this memoir. It is also about family, faith, and loss. It is told with eloquence and courage. As the Poet Laureate it should be no surprise that Smith's use of language is precise. I admire her ability to be self-reflective and honest.

Deeply touching

Just finished this book and I am in tears....the author’s experiences are so poignant, touching and relatable. Although I’m still lucky enough to have my mom in my life, she touched on so many fears I have as we both age. I’m also close in age to the author and my mom has a similar personality and upbringing, so I could relate so much to the time period and through my own childhood and adolescent experiences. This one will stay with me for a long time.

Beautiful and Poetic

This memoir is part coming-of-age, part spiritual journey, part treatise on race. It is beautiful and moving, putting words to describe a transition, a relationship, a hope...

Tracy tells her own story well, using both the written and spoken word. Her narration is occasionally awkward, her self-reflections are somewhat wordy, but it's well worth the time and credit.