For Kate Zambreno, Playthings Are Profound

In her memoir The Light Room, Kate Zambreno argues that the domestic drudgeries and caregiving that for centuries seemed to get in the way of sustained thinking, reading, research, and writing were, all along, their own formidable forms of art. As a book that dwells with children in a way that is almost always compassionate and never condescending, The Light Room returns readers to a kindergarten of the senses—to the basic contours of time, the colors of home and public space—and unravels the relationship between labor and the obscurely fascinating objects it produces, around which life, work, and family subsequently orbit.

Fittingly, the book begins with a tantrum over a toy. Zambreno is watching her older daughter play in Prospect Park, and the three-year-old is “set off” when another child is given a toy that the others in their “parent-child forest school” are not. Among the children, currency takes the form of magnifying glasses, buckets,