She recalls first buying art as a young woman, and learning about camp culture, or as some might say, counterculture, as an art form. The third section, “In the Gallery,” reflects on the art world through Smith’s experiences of art. Smith also analyzes Joni Mitchell, a musical artist from decades ago with precocious insight into our times. She also profiles comedians Jordan Peele and Keegan Michael-Key, the co-creators of the short comedy sketch series Key & Peele. Smith analyzes Jay-Z and his exertion of broad political force through music. The second section, “In the Audience,” is a survey and critique of some current forms of pop cultural expression, highlighting those of black thinkers. Some of these developments occur in chain reactions for example, climate-based migration leads to increased urban multiculturalism, which combined with xenophobic impulses, begets nationalism.

She connects this large national trend to smaller, visceral symptoms of rising ignorance for example, the destruction of libraries in London to make room for commercial property.

Smith draws from her personal experience as an English citizen to comment on the Brexit event, in which the United Kingdom chose to secede from the European Union. She laments how human collectivities have allowed for a climate disaster, and normalized xenophobia, racism, economic inequality, and war.

The collection consists of five sections: “In the World,” “In the Audience,” “In the Gallery,” “On the Bookshelf,” and “Feel Free.” In “In the World,” Smith considers the decade’s most urgent political issues, connecting them to the level of the self and one’s capacities for both positive and negative change. Feel Free borrows its name from a poetry collection published by Nick Laird, Smith’s husband.

Among its themes are identity, alienation, existential ambivalence, and the transdisciplinary nature of creativity, Brexit and populism, climate change and destruction, and the pursuit of happiness. Topically broad, but highly contemporary in voice and social, political, and cultural awareness, the collection transmits the anxieties and desires that characterize the early twenty-first century, some of which are emergent, and others which are legacies of modernity. Feel Free is a 2018 collection of essays by Jamaican-English author Zadie Smith.

Zadie smith feel free review