When Julia Ridley Smith’s parents died, they left behind a virtual museum
of furniture, books, art, and artifacts. Between the contents of their
home, the stock from their North Carolina antiques shop, and the ephemera
of two lives lived, Smith faced a monumental task. What would she do with
her parents’ possessions?
Smith’s wise and moving memoir in essays, The Sum of Trifles, peels back
the layers of meaning surrounding specific objects her parents owned, from
an eighteenth-century miniature to her father’s prosthetics. A vintage
hi-fi provides a view of her often tense relationship with her father,
whose love of jazz kindled her own artistic impulse. A Japanese screen
embodies her mother’s principles of good taste and good manners, while an
antebellum quilt prompts Smith to grapple with her family’s slaveholding
legacy. Along the way, she turns to literature that illuminates how her
inheritance shaped her notions of identity and purpose.
The Sum of Trifles offers up dark humor and raw feeling, mixed with an
erudite streak. It’s a curious, thoughtful look at how we live in and with
our material culture and how we face our losses as we decide what to keep
and what to let go.
About the Author
Julia Ridley Smith is the author of a memoir, The Sum of Trifles
(University of Georgia Press, 2021), and a short story collection, Sex Romp
Gone Wrong (Blair, forthcoming, 2023). Her short stories and essays have
appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Ecotone,
Electric Literature, Literary Matters, the New England Review, Southern
Cultures, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.