Everywhere the Undrowned

December 1, 2023
A poet reflects on her traumatic upbringing. When Smith, who also works as a clinical social worker and mediator for at-risk families, was 14, she spent the summer of 1973 retaking algebra while her mother went camping with a boyfriend. For "a month and a half," Smith lived by herself in New Orleans, assuaging her loneliness by riding the streetcar up and down Saint Charles Avenue while standing beside a 29-year-old driver named Gifford. In a visceral passage, Smith describes how, one night, she was raped at knife point by a stranger while attempting to get a cheeseburger. When her mother was "unreachable" and her summer school teacher was unsympathetic, the author confided in Gifford, who cared for her initially but also initiated a confusing sexual relationship that she was too young to comprehend. In the years following these sexual assaults, Smith finally began to understand the role her mother's neglect had played in her suffering, realizing "that the neglect was the engine that pulled the other parts forward." During her childhood, though, Smith writes, "It never occurred to me that it should have occurred to my mother to do more to protect me. What you get is what you get." When the author's mother suffered from vascular dementia and Smith became her primary caretaker, she realized that she was finally getting what she'd always wanted: her mother's consistent presence. But at what cost? This stunningly lyrical memoir is a profoundly insightful glimpse into the complex and frightening consequences of parental neglect. As Smith's voice naturally evolves from alienated to intensely present, the impressively concise narrative alternates between ethereal observations about everything from space to spiders and gut punches of pain, shame, revelation, and redemption. A masterful literary memoir about caring for those responsible for our trauma.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2024
When poet and essayist Smith was 14, her mother left their New Orleans apartment to go camping out West with a boyfriend. Knowing the campground would have no phone line, Smith wrote her name and their home phone number on the bottom of her mother's shoe--her way to keep a tether to her only custodial parent. Smith was alone, riding the streetcar to attend summer school, where she was retaking algebra. As solitude roared around her, she used the comfort of the streetcar to manage the noise. During this period, Smith was brutally attacked. She survived--and survives every ensuing and related tragedy as she realizes she was built to climb mountains. This memoir celebrates the spiritual prowess of survivors and the intuition and empathy needed to overcome the unthinkable. Now, Smith is emboldened and humbled by the network of powerful survivors who are everywhere if you look. Her book, honoring the gravity of decades-old trauma and encouraging healing as a lifelong act, is sure to bring solace to survivors living in silence.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 26, 2024
Poet and social worker Smith examines the fallout from her teenage sexual assault in her gut-wrenching debut. During the summer of 1973, when Smith was 14, her mother left on a monthslong camping trip with her boyfriend, leaving Smith to fend for herself in New Orleans. One night in July, Smith was abducted and raped by a stranger while walking home. In the immediate aftermath, she fumbled for support from trusted acquaintances including her math teacher and a friendly streetcar driver, only for them to sexualize her and brush her aside. Smith dealt with the long-simmering pain privately until, at age 30, she finally told her mother about the assault, and her mother reacted with rage against Smith for telling her so long after the fact (“Why are you telling me this? She was hot; she was mad. She walked like a gun when she walked out of the room”). Decades later, as Smith began to care for her dying, dementia-stricken mother, she came to an unsteady peace over their rift. In lyrical, metaphor-rich prose fragments that mine the cosmos, television, and avian life for meaning, Smith offers a harrowing yet hopeful look at the long road to recovery. This cathartic personal history is difficult to shake. Agent: Markus Hoffmann, Regal Hoffman & Assoc.