Compiled from dozens of interviews conducted by the author, Anna Deavere Smith’s
Let Me Down Easy is a bracing, tender, melancholy, and triumphant exploration of death and dying. The speakers Smith inhabits include healthcare professionals, theologians, artists, athletes, and activists. They speak of the body as a battleground, a tool, a weapon, a joy, a burden. Smith’s great gift has always been her ability to break down her subjects’ defenses and present them in their full, complicated beauty. Whether channeling Lance Armstrong, Lauren Hutton, Peter Gomes, or others who are not in the public eye, Smith reminds us again and again that in learning to die we learn to live.
O autorze
Anna Deavere Smith is an acclaimed actress, playwright, author, and teacher. Smith rose to prominence with her verbatim theater pieces
Fires in the Mirror and
Twilight: Los Angeles 1992. She is also known for her performances in the films
The American President,
Philadelphia, and
Rachel Getting Married, and her recurring roles on TV’s
black-ish, The West Wing, and
Nurse Jackie. Smith is the recipient of the Mac Arthur “Genius” Fellowship, two Tony nominations, and she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. She received the 2012 National Humanities Award from President Obama.