Maureen Corrigan

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I teach Patti Smith's iconic memoir, Just Kids, almost every year in my New York Lit course at Georgetown.

And without fail, there are undergrads, some of whom hadn't heard of Smith before, who say it's their favorite book.

Like so many other great New York memoirs, Just Kids tells a starting-out story, one where Smith remembers arriving at Port Authority in 1967 on a bus from New Jersey, sleeping rough in parks, and meeting Robert Mapplethorpe, who would become her soulmate.

Part of what's so entrancing to my students is Smith's trust that if she just flung herself onto New York, the city would buoy her up.

And so it did.

Bread of Angels is both a sequel and a prequel to Just Kids.

The memoir Smith published in 2015, M-Train, focuses on the constellations of art and travel in the wake of the loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith, of the Detroit band the MC5, and her brother Todd.

If Bread of Angels lacks the strong coming-to-New York plotline of just kids, it feels more intimate.

For instance, in Bread of Angels, Smith shares an update about the daughter she placed for adoption when she was 20 and reveals a mystery concerning her own paternity.

She also addresses ever-present questions about her sexual identity.

When recording Gloria for her landmark 1975 debut album Horses, Smith says she claimed, "...the right to create, without apology, from a stance beyond gender or social definition."

For a visionary punk poet who prefers to speak in images, these moments are positively confessional.

Smith also revisits her childhood here in much greater depth.

Born in Chicago in 1946, she grew up working class, one of four kids.

The family moved frequently, landing for a time at a subsidized housing complex outside Philadelphia nicknamed The Patch.

Smith recalls that The Patch "...overlooked a wide, unkempt field sprinkled with daisies and dandelions.