The memoir’s title comes from Psalm 78 in the Bible, which describes the manna, called “bread of angels,” that fell in the wilderness: food sent from heaven to sustain the Israelites in their suffering while they fled from enslavement in Egypt. Smith uses the phrase as a symbol for the small, unexpected kindnesses that kept her going: moments when a stranger, a friend, or sheer chance delivered exactly what she needed at exactly the right time. Thus, the bread of angels represents grace—a mystical force that cannot be accounted for or fully fathomed, breaking through the ordinary sufferings of life.

As the memoir’s title, bread of angels also speaks both to the necessities of daily survival and to the need for the sacred in the midst of the everyday. Placed side by side, the words encapsulate Smith’s love of Seeing the Transcendent in the Mundane; for her, the only response is gratitude and attention.

The release of Smith’s first album, Horses (1975), represents the transition between making art in private and performing publicly. The opening line of the first song establishes the album’s tone of independence and self-definition: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” (Smith, Patti. “Gloria.” Horses, Arista Records, 1975). By rejecting externally dictated guilt and authority, Smith claims full ownership of her artistic voice and spirituality. The album’s title came from another song, where the animals are an image of reckless energy and freedom.

The album also demonstrated Smith’s willingness to fight for her artistic vision; she pushed hard to keep Robert Mapplethorpe’s raw cover photo of her, despite the label’s pressure to change it. She saw the photograph’s statement of authenticity and openness as inseparable from the record’s integrity.

The success of Horses now symbolizes the legacy of art that lasts because of its impact. The album outlived the moment it was made, and Smith’s position in the canon of music ensures that it will continue being important after she’s gone. In a memoir preoccupied with erosion and loss, Horses stands as evidence that some things hold.

The phrase “rebel hump” shows up for the first time in the Prelude, when Smith writes the words repeatedly before knowing what they mean. The image is evocative in several ways, suggesting a camel’s storing of vital nutrients, which in this case are the impulses that reject the status quo and push for revolution. The rebel hump comes to represent the concepts of breakthrough and exile. Throughout the book, the image of something pushing against its shell, breaking free, and shedding its old skin keeps coming back. It carries the ache and awkwardness of growing up, evolving artistically, and remaking yourself. There’s humor and seriousness threaded within the symbol, and by the end of the memoir, Smith’s rebel hump has become the badge of her creative life, clumsy, insistent, and tied to transformation.