Freedom
Essays
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jun 9, 2026
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF LIT HUB'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2026
A radically vulnerable and virtuosic inquiry into the pursuit of freedom and the interminable nature of struggle, from the award-winning author of What We Lose
Weaving personal reflections with piercing insight and expansive vision across nine brilliant essays, Zinzi Clemmons explores the complexities of the elusive concept of freedom. As the daughter of a South African mother and a Trinidadian America father, she recounts growing up in the largely white, affluent town of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania—and her frequent travels to Johannesburg, where the lofty promise of freedom was all around her. Coming of age amidst the euphoria of South Africa's first all-race elections, she grapples with the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the shattered hope in the wake of the Obama era. Clemmons critiques the entrenched inequalities that haunt both countries, from the tragic loss of a childhood friend to the violence that often befalls women who have the audacity to be free.
In a deft mix of memoir, family history, criticism, and reportage, drawing on a vast range of material from Joan Didion to James Baldwin, political analysis and history to Clemmons’s own experiences across the globe, Freedom is an incendiary exploration of race, sex, class, and inheritance. In elegiac prose, Clemmons trains her discerning eye on American institutions and mythologies, probing the bounds of liberation and autonomy to interrogate our most enduring quest—the relentless pursuit of freedom for all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The electrifying nonfiction debut from novelist Clemmons (What We Lose) muses on the thorny concept of freedom in "a world buckling from the consequences of centuries of interlocking injustices." In particular, she contrasts the American right's narrow definition of personal freedom at the expense of others to that of Black people, for whom freedom is both more "expansive" and also continually "revised" through struggle. The title essay ruminates on a 2013 trip Clemmons took to Johannesburg to unveil her mother's headstone that coincided with the death of Nelson Mandela. "Home Going" examines the Great Migration alongside the author's experience moving to the West Coast. In "A People Without a Nation," Clemmons interrogates Afropessimism's rise alongside that of Trump, and considers how Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright's Native Son, can provide "a window into the psychology of the school shooter, the serial rapist... the white supremacist." Most harrowing is "Freedom Pt. 2," Clemmons's account of being forcibly kissed by a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist when she was in grad school and later speaking publicly about the incident during the #MeToo movement, only to have her veracity questioned, likely damaging her career and leading her to worry about being "reduced to a footnote in The Author's story." It adds up to a sharply glimmering vision of how personal experience connects to larger political moments.
