How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Name: How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
Brand: Little Brown and Company
SKU: 9780316492935
Price: 29.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Regular price $29.00

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Hardcover – June 1, 2021

by Clint Smith (Author)

"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 hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on 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 more than four hundred people. 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.

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, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark 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.

About the Author

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which 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 is also the author of the narrative nonfiction book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America which will be published on June 1, 2021. 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.

Publisher : Little, Brown and Company (June 1, 2021)
Language : English
Hardcover : 352 pages
ISBN-10 : 0316492930
ISBN-13 : 9780316492935
Item Weight : 1.15 pounds
Dimensions : 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.75 inches

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Hardcover – June 1, 2021

About the Author

You might also like