Skip to content
Responsive image
Vendor
Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English

HOW THE WORD IS PASSED

Clint Smith

A Reckoning with the History of Slavery in America

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.

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent. The book won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He has received fellowships from New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review and elsewhere. Born and raised in New Orleans, he received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and his Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University.

WAS WIR UNS ERZaeHLEN
Das Erbe der Sklaverei - Eine Riese durch die amerikanische Geschichte
Deutsch von Henriette Zeltner-Shane
[HC Siedler 03/2022]
Available products
Book

Published 2021-06-01 by Little, Brown (US)

Comments

Named Most Anticipated Title of 2021 by Time The Millions The Rumpus Publishers Weekly Library Journal

“Clint Smith chronicles in vivid and meditative prose his travels to historical sites that are truth-telling or deceiving visitors about slavery. Humans enslaved Black people, and then too often enslaved history. But How the Word Is Passed frees history, frees humanity to reckon honestly with the legacy of slavery. We need this book.” ?Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Anti-Racist and Stamped from the Beginning “A work of moral force and humility, How the Word is Passed offers a compelling account of the history and memory of slavery in America. Writing from Confederate Army cemeteries, former plantations, modern-day prisons, and other historical sites, Clint Smith moves seamlessly been past and present, revealing how slavery is remembered and misremembered—and why it matters. Engaging and wise, this book combines history and reportage, poem and memoir. It is a deep lesson and a reckoning.” ?Matthew Desmond, Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology and author of Evicted “?A beautifully written, evocative, and timely meditation on the way slavery is commemorated in the United States.” ?Annette Gordon-Reed, Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard and Pultizer prize winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello “Clint Smith has given us a new lens for seeing the spaces we inhabit, the stories they tell, and the people who tell those stories. How the Word is Passed sheds light on the contested narratives beneath the surface of our collective national identity, inviting us to dig a little deeper, reminding us never to take received histories for granted.” ?Eve Ewing, author of 1919 and Ghosts in the Schoolyard

UK: Dialogue Books (Little, Brown UK);

"How the Word Is Passed is a necessary, important, and totally engaging book."

"In reexamining neighborhoods, holidays and quotidian sites, Smith forces us to reconsider what we think we know about American history."