How the Word Is Passed
By Clint Smith
- Genre
- History, Society & Current Affairs
- Publisher
- Little, Brown and Company (Hachette)
- Publication year
- 2021
- ISBN
- 9780316492935
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America is a work of nonfiction by the poet and journalist Clint Smith, published by Little, Brown in June 2021. It examines historical sites tied to slavery. It won the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
How does a country tell the story of its own original sin? Clint Smith answers by visiting the places where American slavery is remembered, half-remembered and denied: Monticello, the Whitney Plantation, the Angola prison, a Confederate cemetery, a Juneteenth celebration, even a slaving site in Senegal. At each he listens - to guides, tourists, descendants - and measures the distance between history and the stories we prefer. A poet by training, Smith writes with grace and restraint, letting contradictions speak before he does. intendle recommends it as one of the most illuminating books on memory and race in years, humane rather than hectoring. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times 10 Best Book of 2021, it has become a fixture of community and classroom reading. Personal, reportorial and quietly devastating, it changes how you see the landscape you thought you knew.