The Light of the World: A Memoir - Hardcover

Alexander, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1455599875 ISBN 13: 9781455599875

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2015

Synopsis

A deeply resonant memoir for anyone who has loved and lost that is at once "remarkably uplifting" (Washington Post) and "crushing, lovely, painful, and above all powerful" (New York Journal of Books), from acclaimed poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Alexander.

* Pulitzer Prize Finalist
* National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
* A New Yorker, NPR, Boston Globe, Publisher's Weekly, Newsday, Library Journal, People.com, Shelf Awareness, The Root, and St. Louis Dispact Best Book Pick
* First Lady Michelle Obama's Favorite Book of 2015
* New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
* An Amazon's Best Book of the Month
* #1 Indie Next Pick

In The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband. Channeling her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid price, Alexander tells a love story that is, itself, a story of loss. As she reflects on the beauty of her married life, the trauma resulting from her husband's death, and the solace found in caring for her two teenage sons, Alexander universalizes a very personal quest for meaning and acceptance in the wake of loss.

The Light of the World is at once an endlessly compelling memoir and a deeply felt meditation on the blessings of love, family, art, and community. It is also a lyrical celebration of a life well-lived and a paean to the priceless gift of human companionship. For those who have loved and lost, or for anyone who cares what matters most, The Light of the World is required reading.

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of April 2015: Elizabeth Alexander’s memoir of her marriage and the sudden death of her husband is by turns sorrowful and joyful, earthy and elegiac, deeply personal and achingly universal. Alexander, an acclaimed poet perhaps best known for the poem she delivered at Barack Obama’s first inauguration, is a professor at Yale. (In an aside, she reveals that she is only the 3rd African American woman to get tenure at that University.) Her husband, Ficre, was an Eritrean who’d survived civil war in Africa to become a chef and artist in America; their marriage, as chronicled here, was a triumph of politics, society and romance. It was not without its secrets or its difficulties, but it was clearly a happy, no, make that a joyful union; the pleasures of cooking together (Alexander sometimes includes recipes), entertaining a huge, international group of family and friends and raising their two precocious boys is palpable on every mellifluous page. Like Joan Didion, Meghan O’Rourke and Roger Rosenblatt before her, Alexander here faces the unfaceable topic of loss -- and almost convinces us – and herself – that despite her terrible grief, she is grateful for the life and love that preceded it. --Sara Nelson

About the Author:

Elizabeth Alexander is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. She has recently been appointed President of the Andrew H. Mellon Foundation, the nation's largest funder in the arts and humanities. She composed and recited "Praise Song for the Day" for President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration. She is the author of six books of poetry--including American Sublime, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--and is the first winner of the Jackson Prize for Poetry and a National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellow. She was the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University for 15 years and chaired the African American Studies Department.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1455599875
• ISBN 13: 9781455599875
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224