Not Wanting a Thing to Be the Thing is the first stroke memoir written by a Black woman biblical scholar. Smith's story is her mother's story, and it is not. It is the story of other stroke survivors, and it is not. It is a unique telling of the civil war that erupts in her body. It is a journey of not knowing, awareness, survival, fragmentation, discovery, and recovery. Smith's story is inspiring, amazing, brilliant, funny, thought-provoking, and revelatory. She has a gift for bringing her readers into each space to see what she sees and feel what she feels.