The Light of the World
A Memoir
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4.2 • 62 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A deeply resonant memoir for anyone who has loved and lost, from acclaimed poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Alexander.
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Love and loss bookend an extraordinary relationship in Elizabeth Alexander’s powerful memoir. When her husband died suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart attack days after he turned 50, the world changed instantly for the author and her two young sons. She provides intimate glimpses of her partner, who fled war-torn Eritrea as a teenager before carving out a contented life as a cook, painter, and family man. Those scenes of a happy marriage make the overwhelming pain of her loss all the more heartbreaking. An acclaimed poet, Alexander conveys emotional resonance economically. Her grief manifests in dreams, where her husband makes frequent appearances, as she tries to shepherd her two children through their own devastation. The Light of the World reminds us of those we’ve lost and makes us reconsider those we hold dear, which seems a fitting legacy for the life it honors.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet and Yale African Studies professor Alexander (The Black Interior; Power and Possibility) was devastated by the death of her artist husband, who died of cardiac arrest at age 50 while exercising in the basement of their home. This memoir is an elegiac narrative of the man she loved. Artist and chef Ficre Ghebreyesus's death was as inexplicable as the spark of love between him and Alexander after they met at a New Haven caf in 1996. Ghebreyesus was a thin, fit person who nonetheless smoked; and he was not without his mysteries. For example, in the days before his death, he was obsessed with buying lottery tickets. Ghebreyesus was a gentle, peace-loving East African who had come through the Eritrean-Ethiopian civil war and was a refugee in America; he became a fashionable painter and an inventive chef at Caffe Adulis, which he ran in New Haven with his brothers. Alexander, who grew up in Washington, D.C., describes her husband's endearing traits such as sleep-talking or singing in his native Tigrinya, and the special rituals he made when their sons reached age 13. Fashioning her mellifluous narrative around the beauty she found in Ghebreyesus, Alexander is grateful, patient, and willing to pursue a fit of magical thinking that he might just return.
Customer Reviews
Light of the world
A terribly vain and self indulgent catharsis journal
Do not waste your time or money on this book
It has no point
No plot
No lesson
Not of interest to anyone except the author