★ 03/22/2021
Poet and Atlantic staff writer Smith debuts with a moving and perceptive survey of landmarks that reckon, or fail to reckon, with the legacy of slavery in America. Visiting Monticello plantation, Smith describes how Thomas Jefferson’s self-perception as a “benevolent slave owner” often conflicted with his actions. On a tour of Angola prison, Smith discusses how nonunanimous jury verdicts fueled the “convict leasing system” that replaced slave labor in post-Reconstruction Louisiana, and notes that when the state switched from the electric chair to lethal injection in 1991, Angola inmates refused to build the prison death bed. At the Blandford Cemetery for Confederate soldiers in Petersburg, Va., Smith questions on-site historians about the ethical implications of preserving a place of honor for the defenders of slavery. He also checks in at the annual Juneteenth festival in Galveston, Tex., and takes an illuminating walking tour of underground railroad sites in New York City. Suffused with lyrical descriptions and incisive historical details, including Robert E. Lee’s ruthlessness as a slave owner and early resistance by Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois to the Confederate general’s “deification,” this is an essential consideration of how America’s past informs its present. Agent: Alia Habib, the Gernert Co. (June)
01/01/2021
Atlantic staff writer Smith travels the country, moving from his native New Orleans to Monticello; the Whitney Plantation, which aims to preserve the experience of those enslaved; Angola, a former plantation in Louisiana that now serves as a maximum-security prison; and downtown Manhattan, where people were bought and sold. His aim: to show that slavery has been central to the making of America.
★ 2021-03-31
A Black journalist and poet calls for a reconsideration of the way America teaches its history of slavery.
“The story our country tells about the Civil War often flattens some of its otherwise complex realities,” writes New Orleans native Smith, a staff writer for the Atlantic. He notes the U.S. is “at an inflection point, in which there is a willingness to more fully grapple with the legacy of slavery and how it shaped the world we live in today.” However, while “some places have attempted to tell the truth about their proximity to slavery and its aftermath,” others have refused. For this book, the author traveled to nine sites, eight in the U.S. and one in Dakar, Senegal, “to understand how each reckons with its relationship to the history of American slavery.” The result is a devastating portrait with unforgettable details. At the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, historians have labored to help visitors close “the yawning gap on slavery” in their educations—“a hammer attempting to unbend four centuries of crooked nails.” By contrast, the Angola Museum at the Louisiana State Penitentiary has a gift shop with such souvenirs as “a white mug with the silhouette of a guard sitting in a watchtower surrounded by fencing.” When Smith asked his White tour guide to comment on Angola’s role in slavery, the guide replied, “I can’t change that.” At these places and other sites such as Monticello, Galveston Island, and New York City, the author conducted interviews with tour guides, visitors, and others to paint a vivid portrait of the extent to which venues have attempted to redress past wrongs. Smith concludes with a moving epilogue about taking his grandparents to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The trip elicited painful stories from their childhoods, such as his grandmother recalling walking home from school as White children in buses threw ice cream at her and hurled vicious epithets.
A brilliant, vital work about “a crime that is still unfolding.
"Suffused with lyrical descriptions and incisive historical details, including Robert E. Lee’s ruthlessness as a slave owner and early resistance by Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois to the Confederate general’s “deification,” this is an essential consideration of how America’s past informs its present."—Publisher's Weekly
"The Atlantic writer drafts a history of slavery in this country unlike anything you’ve read before.”—Entertainment Weekly
“An important and timely book about race in America.”—Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine
"Merging memoir, travelogue, and history, Smith fashions an affecting, often lyrical narrative of witness."—The New York Review of Books
"In this exploration of the ways we talk about — and avoid talking about — slavery, Smith blends reportage and deep critical thinking to produce a work that interrogates both history and memory."—Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe
“Raises questions that we must all address, without recourse to wishful thinking or the collective ignorance and willful denial that fuels white supremacy.” —Martha Anne Toll, The Washington Post
“Sketches an impressive and deeply affecting human cartography of America’s historical conscience…an extraordinary contribution to the way we understand ourselves.” —Julian Lucas, New York Times Book Review
"With careful research, scholarship, and perspective, Smith underscores a necessary truth: the imprint of slavery is unyieldingly present in contemporary America, and the stories of its legacy, of the enslaved people and their descendants, are everywhere."—TeenVogue
“Clint Smith, in his new book “How the Word Is Passed,” has created something subtle and extraordinary.”—Christian Science Monitor
"Part of what makes this book so brilliant is its bothandedness. It is both a searching historical work and a journalistic account of how these historic sites operate today. Its both carefully researched and lyrical. I mean Smith is a poet and the sentences in this book just are piercingly alive. And it’s both extremely personal—it is the author’s story—and extraordinarily sweeping. It amplifies lots of other voices. Past and present. Reading it I kept thinking about that great Alice Walker line ‘All History is Current’.”—John Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed
“The summer’s most visionary work of nonfiction is this radical reckoning with slavery, as represented in the nation’s monuments, plantations, and landmarks.”—Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
“The detail and depth of the storytelling is vivid and visceral, making history present and real. Equally commendable is the care and compassion shown to those Smith interviews — whether tour guides or fellow visitors in these many spaces. Due to his care as an interviewer, the responses Smith elicits are resonant and powerful. . . . Smith deftly connects the past, hiding in plain sight, with today's lingering effects.”—Hope Wabuke, NPR
“This isn’t just a work of history, it’s an intimate, active exploration of how we’re still constructing and distorting our history.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“Both an honoring and an exposé of slavery’s legacy in America and how this nation is built upon the experiences, blood, sweat and tears of the formerly enslaved.”—The Root
“What [Smith] does, quite successfully, is show that we whitewash our history at our own risk. That history is literally still here, taking up acres of space, memorializing the past, and teaching us how we got to be where we are, and the way we are. Bury it now and it will only come calling later." —USA Today
Poet and journalist Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction captivates as he explores the ways that we Americans confront and reckon with the legacy of slavery in the United States. His resonant voice moves with a poet’s rhythm as he takes listeners to former plantations, on historical tours, and to Angola Prison. Many sites are in the American South, though he also includes eye-opening experiences in New York City and in Dakar, Senegal. Listeners meet those who are working to explore the gaps in our historical records and helping to uncover the true history of these sites. He also points out those who are willfully ignoring the historical record, relying on shared nostalgia instead. Smith’s personal reflections, especially his conversations with his grandparents, make a lasting impact. E.E.C. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Poet and journalist Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction captivates as he explores the ways that we Americans confront and reckon with the legacy of slavery in the United States. His resonant voice moves with a poet’s rhythm as he takes listeners to former plantations, on historical tours, and to Angola Prison. Many sites are in the American South, though he also includes eye-opening experiences in New York City and in Dakar, Senegal. Listeners meet those who are working to explore the gaps in our historical records and helping to uncover the true history of these sites. He also points out those who are willfully ignoring the historical record, relying on shared nostalgia instead. Smith’s personal reflections, especially his conversations with his grandparents, make a lasting impact. E.E.C. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
