HOW THE WORD IS PASSED

A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
by Clint Smith

Over the course of the last year and a half, I have challenged myself to read more antiracist literature both to educate myself and hopefully to make positive changes in the lives of my family and community. I bring this up because How The Word Is Passed is easily one of the top three books on this subject that I have read.

Clint Smith is a poet whose first book of poems, Counting Descent, is an incredibly moving collection of his thoughts on childhood, race and family. How The Word Is Passed is prose, but his use of beautiful, unexpected language makes the book engrossing. For example, he describes a cemetery as being “as still as a cloudless sky.” He describes people in an equally evocative manner, calling one man’s voice as “low and raspy, like the thin layer of sand that cakes the sidewalk near a beach.”

Smith constructs each chapter in How The Word Is Passed around seven places he sees as essential to understanding slavery in America, both as it existed at its zenith and the legacy that remains in our society today. Each place, from Monticello to New York City brings to life a different aspect of what life as a slave was like, and how that oppression has shifted but not disappeared. He speaks to many people on his visits and is remarkably open to discussion, even with those who clearly still believe in the supremacy of the white race.

I truly cannot recommend this book strongly enough as both educational and offering a new perspective. But it also has some of the most gorgeous writing I have encountered in quite some time. (Lily)

In case you’re interested, my other two top books about antiracism are So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo and White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For While People To Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo (reviewed here).

I approached reading How the Word Is Passed as something that I should do – not something that I would necessarily enjoy. How mistaken I was! In How The Word is Passed, Clint Smith has written a beautiful, original book that is both educational and engaging. I can’t emphasize strongly enough that everyone should read this book.

Smith is a staff writer for The Atlantic Magazine and a published poet. In How the Word is Passed, he writes about seven historical sites he visited that each have important ties to slavery. He shares his thoughts about those sites from the perspective of a young, American, Black man who is trying to make sense of history lessons he learned growing up and those he was never taught. From the Monticello Plantation to Angola Prison to New York City, Smith looks at American History through the lens of slavery and the important role it has played and continues to play in US History. Smith opened my eyes to look at US history in a new way, but he did it in a quiet, thoughtful, even poetic manner. Along with my co-editor, I recommend How the Word is Passed unequivocally. (Liz)