FREEDOM

Nine essays on the experience of a Black woman in troubled times.

Clemmons follows her acclaimed debut novel, What We Lose (2017), with a series of searching and well-researched essays combining memoir, cultural criticism, and reportage. The first half of the two-part title essay describes a trip to South Africa in 2013 for the unveiling of her mother’s tombstone in her hometown of Johannesburg; during Clemmons’ time in that country, she was sexually assaulted in a hotel room. The second part of the essay tells her account of what happened between Clemmons and a writer she identifies only as The Author, but whom most readers will know is Junot Díaz. (In 2018, Clemmons said Díaz had forcibly kissed her years earlier.) She writes, “Looking back on this experience from years on, what stings the most is the knowledge that, to many, I am nothing outside of my involvement with The Author. That all I have worked for and all that I am—good, bad, and in between—has been reduced to a footnote in The Author’s story. If I have one regret, it is that.” This melancholy assessment is likely accurate, but “Freedom, Pt. 2” is a welcome update, even more important since Díaz was cleared of misconduct by MIT, where he is a professor. Other essays in the book focus on less inflammatory topics: a discussion of life in Los Angeles that includes an homage to Joan Didion; an analysis of class and segregation in her hometown of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, woven around the story of the death of a childhood friend; a commentary on Afropessimism and the work of Richard Wright and James Baldwin. Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama also make appearances.

Rejecting conventional wisdom and misleading narratives, Clemmons thinks clearly and writes bravely on crucial topics.