“We need this book.” –Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times
bestselling author of How to be an Anti-Racist
The Atlantic
staff writer and poet Clint Smith’s revealing, contemporary
portrait of America as a slave owning nation
Beginning in his own
hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader through an
unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest
about the past and those that are not—that offer an
intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping
our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.
It is the story of
the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas
Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while
enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the
Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to
preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work
sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned
maximum security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men
who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is
the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of
thousands of Confederate soldiers.
In a deeply
researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and
its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is
Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential
stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by
on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire
neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history
of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply
imprinted.
Informed by
scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today,
Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark work of
reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful
role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country
and how it has come to be.