Smith's body of work examines the influence of significant factors- such as place, memory, art, tradition, social expectation, media, religion, history, and story-on personal identity. Enriching her treatment of the subject, she explores this issue always with a consciousness of the self's ultimate indeterminability. In twelve novels and four collections of short stories, Smith draws us into a rigorous exploration of the self, the location and essence of which are often sought in a landscape of shifting and imagined markers.