![]() ![]() nearly seven in ten Republicans prefer America as it was in the fifties, a nostalgia. In pieces (wisely) placed up front, like “Fences: a Brexit Diary” and “Optimism and Despair,” Smith (child of a white English father and a Jamaican mother) confronts inevitable paradoxes: “I find these days that a wistful form of time travel has become a persistent political theme. ![]() A reader’s awareness is sharpened, alongside Smith’s. ![]() But she instantly accedes to Bosnian-born author Aleksander Hemon’s quiet correction - that Brexit is in fact “just a disaster,” whereas “War is the total disaster.” Hemon had lived through it. you can’t fight for a freedom you’ve forgotten how to identify.”Įver alert to those truths that preempt others, Smith pronounces Brexit a “total disaster” when meeting with fellow New York University teachers to commence a Paris semester. written in England and America during the eight years of the Obama presidency. In her foreword (written in January 2017), she warns: “These essays. Indeed, Smith’s eager to meet the tougher realities head-on. ![]() Dipping into these pieces (in any order) is like setting out on a walk with a vibrant, curious, gracefully articulate friend. What binds the collection is Smith’s voice: frank, urgent, self-ironic. ![]()
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