Free PDF The Light of the World: A Memoir, by Elizabeth Alexander
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The Light of the World: A Memoir, by Elizabeth Alexander
Free PDF The Light of the World: A Memoir, by Elizabeth Alexander
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Amazon.com 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
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Review
"THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD simply took my breath away."―First Lady Michelle Obama, MORE"This is a beautifully written, heartrendingly candid account of the abrupt loss of her husband by the distinguished poet Elizabeth Alexander. It is a vivid, intensely rendered elegy of a remarkable man--husband, father, artist, chef. Both a memoir and a portrait of a marriage, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD is, as its title suggests, a bittersweet testament to love and the memory of love, one of the most compelling memoirs of loss that I have ever read."―Joyce Carol Oates "Elizabeth Alexander has written a brave and beautiful book about love and loss-the deep pain that comes with such a loss, and the redemptive realization that such pain is a small price to pay for such a love."―Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle"This is a gorgeous love story, written by one of America's greatest contemporary poets. Graceful in its simplicity, sweeping in scope, this book is proof that behind the boarded up windows of America's roiled marriages and ruined affairs, true love still exists, and where it does exist, it graces the world-and us-with light and hope. Elizabeth Alexander is a prose writer of deep talent and affecting skill. With ease, she peels back layer after layer to show the soft secrets of affection, the kindness, and the wide open generosity of a full hearted man and talented artist, who had more love to give in his relatively short lifetime than most of us will ever know."―James McBride, National Book Award-winning author of The Good Lord Bird and #1 New York Times bestseller The Color of Water"THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD is as beautiful and moving as a gorgeous piece of music. The minute I finished it, I longed to read it again."―Anna Deavere Smith"With tenderness and fierce poetic precision, [Alexander] realizes a simple truth: that death only deepens the richness of a life journey that must push on into the future. A delicate, existentially elegiac memoir."―Kirkus"A radiant book of love's everlastingness and art's infinite sustenance."―Booklist (starred review)"Love - for a marvelous man, for her sons, for the textures and pleasures of the world - shines on every page of Elizabeth Alexander's THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. This acutely observed study of what it means to lose one's beloved is a profound and beautiful contradiction: a joyous book that faces head-on the deepest grief, written with art and courage, and with limitless heart."―Mark Doty"A moving tribute to her late husband's memory and a deeply felt meditation on loss, love and literature."―Publisher's Weekly"She shows us how feeding your family and remembering to be aware of the small details of everyday life are the bedrocks of true connection. In this book of prose, each page is a poem."―O, The Oprah Magazine
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Product details
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; F First Edition Used edition (April 21, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1455599875
ISBN-13: 978-1455599875
Product Dimensions:
5.9 x 0.9 x 8.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.6 out of 5 stars
246 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#332,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
It is not often that I read a book as beautiful and powerful as 'The Light of the World'. Written by the poet Elizabeth Alexander, it is an homage to her beloved husband Ficre who died suddenly at the age of 50. Theirs was a strong love, recognized at first sight and forged through a shared love of art, food, language, and family.Ficre is an Eritrean who has lived a life of suffering and change, his resilience the shining light that has seen him through wartime and his plight as a refugee. He travels to several countries before finding himself in New York City where he runs a restaurant with his brother while also doing his artwork. He is fluent in several languages and reflects the cultures around him through his artwork - painting, printmaking, photography. He meets Elizabeth, a poet, and they meld their backgrounds together, creating a family filled with singing, love, food and friends.Ficre touches the lives of many through the food he lovingly prepares and the artwork he creates. He loves to wear bright colors which seem to show off his strength and brightness, a reflection of the sun that shines within him. When he dies suddenly, while on a treadmill, Elizabeth's loss and profound grief are intolerable. She keens to the skies, she cries every day for months, she does not leave her home except to teach her beloved students in the African American Studies Department at Yale.In this memoir, Elizabeth's grief is palpable but so is the joy and love she experiences in her marriage to Ficre, a devoted and stalwart man. The book pays him homage in a magnificent way, creating from words the picture of a man I wish I had had the privilege to meet. "I loved my friend. He went away from me. There's nothing more to say."
WOW!!! What an unbelievable book of lamentations for a deceased husband.The emotions that Lizzy packs into her prose reflects the artistic writer she is. Her tears become your tears as she struggles to meet live as it is forced upon her.Oh, to have a love like she had. How blessed she was (and how well she writes of her blessings)!This book is almost a one of a kind.
I agree with Michelle Obama: it's my favorite book of 2015. I have been giving it to all of my friends. There's a story to it: a story of love and surviving grief. But what makes it exceptional is the lyrical, musical language. In a passage near the end of the book (this is not a spoiler), Alexander writes about her husband, Ficre: "When we met those many years ago, I let everything happen to me, and it was beauty. Along the road, more beauty, and fear and struggle, and work, and learning, and joy. I could not have kept Ficre’s death from happening, and from happening to us. It happened; it is part of who we are; it is our beauty and our terror. We must be gleaners from what life has set before us."
I was a high school classmate of the author, and did not know anything about the book or what happened to her and her family until I went to our hight school reunion party and found out from another classmate. The next day, I got the book and started it right away. I am not a reader, so it typically takes me months or more to get through a book- this just took me a few days despite my busy schedule. I too lost my husband to a sudden heart attack, on Thanksgiving morning in 2003, and I also had two children and had celebrated 15 Christmases together. There are quite a few similarities. So I can relate to much of the book. I read many grief books to help me. But her book is different. It speaks to the experience in such an artful and poetic way. Through her experience I can relive my own, but not in a sad way. I don't know how to describe it, but she has put to words some feelings that I had and I was not able to explain to anyone- such as the need to recount every moment leading up to the death. The love story is so beautiful and beautifully told that I believe it is an inspiration to all. I am remarried, and reading her book helps me to appreciate the marriage I have now, and to do more work to appreciate my husband and what I have been given. It is so inspiring and I have appreciated being able to read it and learn from it. I was not close friends with the author, but I truly respect and appreciate her now. She has painted such a beautiful picture of her husband through words that I almost feel as if I know him even though I never met him.
At only 15 pages in, I so desperately wanted to change the ending – extend the love story. Knowing what was to be shared in the coming pages, for a moment, I close the book – cherishing Elizabeth's, Simon's and Solomon's beloved Ficre as a living breathing husband and father. Thinking, so unrealistically that if I stop now, they will still have him. When I next opened the book, I read without pause to the last word. Elizabeth's memoir shared her personal story of love, grief, continuing love, and life in a way that leaves an indelible mark and a desire to know more...more about Ficre's legacy of love as lived through the ones he left behind.
I read this book days after a dear loved one has passed. I think it to be a comfort when you can find that ones own grief intersects with another persons sorrow. This to me is the best purpose of this book....To show the universality of grief, and then the reawakening of life. A lonesome scary process, when illustrated through the life of someone else, i.e. author Elizabeth, it can be oddly fortifying and hopeful.
The book tells the story of the last days in couples life before the husband suddenly and unexpectedly dies. It then goes on to cover the wife's grief, here thoughts, the memories, the doubt and the the pain. It's an immensely powerful book. A book of deep love and sharp pain painted with beatific words and anecdotes. They where supposed to grow old together, to see their kids graduate and have grandchildren.It's a painful read yet ultimately a tribute to the beauty of life. The author was loved and is still loved even though here lover is gone. Read it and go give your family a hug and a kiss. They are ultimately the only worthwhile endeavor in your life.
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