Reviews
"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, "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 Time bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed, "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, "This book is a beautiful, painful tour of some of the darkest and most complicated parts of American history that will make readers rethink the truth being told about the sins of our past that are still very much alive in the present."-- The Daily Beast, The Best Summer Reads of 2021, "This is a brave and important book that needed to be written and demands to be read."-- David Takami, Seattle Times, Named a Most Anticipated Title of 2021 by Time The Millions The Rumpus Buzzfeed Apple Book Publishers Weekly Library Journal A Readers Digest Book by Black Authors to Know About, "James Baldwin wrote that history 'is literally present in all that we do'; Smith's book illuminates that reality for slavery in America, interrogating the lies we tell ourselves and helping us see clearly so that we can chart a new path towards justice."-- Ploughshares, Named Most Anticipated Title of 2021 by Time The Millions The Rumpus Buzzfeed Apple Book Publishers Weekly Library Journal, "Smith tells his stories with the soul of a poet and the heart of an educator. Smith's ambitious book is fueled by a humble sense of duty: he sought the wisdom of those who tell of slavery's legacy "outside traditional classrooms and beyond the pages of textbooks"; public historians who "have dedicated their lives to sharing this history with others." Smith channels the spirit of Toni Morrison here; the writer as one to pass on the word so that it is never forgotten."-- The Millions, "Stop by stop, Smith weaves a tapestry of willful ignorance before pointing the way toward improvement."-- Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times, "?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 Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, "In this tremendously researched and fascinating book, Smith examines various sites in the United States (North as well as South) and Dakar, Senegal to uncover forgotten or suppressed histories that reveal the lengths to which we must confront our past in order to be a freer and more just society."-- New York Observer, "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, "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 between 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 Pulitzer prize winning author of Evicted, One of John Green's Two Favorite Books of the Year Washington Post Best Book to Read in June Time Best Book of Summer 2021 The Root's Book You Have to Read This Summer A Goodreads Hottest New Book of the Season One of Buzzfeed's New Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List ASAP, "A powerful, timely book, one that we should all read over and over again, marking up the pages as we go."-- Bitch, "Clint Smith, in his new book "How the Word Is Passed," has created something subtle and extraordinary."-- Christian Science Monitor, "Clint Smith's How the Word is Passed is a book for this moment. At once a deeply researched history of American slavery and a very contemporary look at the grim legacy of its manifold cruelties (and how they are memorialized in plain sight), every high school senior in the country should have a copy of How the Word is Passed , the better to understand that 'yes this is who we are'." -- Lit Hub, 75 Nonfiction Books You Should Read This Summer, "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 btween 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 Pulitzer prize winning author of Evicted, "Inspired by the destruction of Confederate monuments in his native New Orleans, a poet takes to the road, plotting a journey that winds into the past, from Monticello to New York City to Louisiana's notorious Angola prison, drilling deep into the bedrock of our racist past."-- Oprah Daily, "A moving and perceptive survey of landmarks that reckon, or fail to reckon, with the legacy of slavery in America...this is an essential consideration of how America's past informs its present."-- Publishers Weekly. starred, "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, "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, "?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, " How the Word Is Passed Is a Necessary, Important, and Totally Engaging Book." -- Publishers Weekly, "There is perhaps no greater challenge than convincing a nation to remember what it would rather choose to forget. Clint Smith, one of our most thoughtful writers and thinkers, skillfully documents how echoes of enslavement remain everywhere. The question is whether we have the collective will to reckon with the realities of our past in order to build a better future. How the Word Is Passed is a vital, desperately-needed contribution to that reckoning."-- Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and A New Era in America's Racial Justice, "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
