Changing My Mind

(Hardback)

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A sparkling collection of Zadie Smith's nonfiction over the past decade. Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the result is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary. Split into four sections-"Reading," "Being," "Seeing," and "Feeling"-Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith's unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays-some published here for the first time-on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani. In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers-E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others-have had on her writing life and her self-understanding. Smith also speaks directly to writers as a craftsman, offering precious practical lessons on process. Here and throughout, readers will learn of the wide-ranging experiences-in novels, travel, philosophy, politics, and beyond-that have nourished Smith's rich life of the mind. Her probing analysis offers tremendous food for thought, encouraging readers to attend to the slippery questions of identity, art, love, and vocation that so often go neglected. Changing My Mind announces Zadie Smith as one of our most important contemporary essayists, a writer with the rare ability to turn the world on its side with both fact and fiction. Changing My Mind is a gift to readers, writers, and all who want to look at life more expansively.

Author Bio

Margaret Trudeau was the First Lady to Pierre Trudeau, the 15th Prime Minister of Canada with whom she had three children. Later in life, she remarried and had two children with real estate mogul Fred Kemper. She is the author of two previous memoirs, Beyond Reason (1979) and Consequences (1982). She is a spokesperson for avalanche safety and the Honorary President of WaterCan, an international organization that helps the worlds poorest people gain access to clean water. She sits on the executive Advisory Board of the UBC Mental Health Institute and has been awarded the Society of Biological Psychiatry Humanitarian Award. She is a national mental health advocate who challenges the stigma around mental illness and speaks across the country.