Book Study: "How the word is Passed: A reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America," by Clint Smith

Book Study: "How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America," by Clint Smith

How the Word is Passed: 42 pages, 6388 words, many visuals

Clint Smith’s book reckons with the lies told about American history
The author traveled around the country to understand place and collective memory
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Author Clint Smith: “I think part of the issue is that so many people around the country are operating with a different understanding of what the history of this country is.” Clint Smith
BY DAVID DENNIS JR. @DAVIDDTSS
June 1, 2021

Guided tour of slave places throughout the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Smith visits locations and tries to tie the past to the present.

How the Word is Passed: 42 pages, 6388 words, many visuals

At just 32, Clint Smith has already become a nationally recognized name through his poetry collection, Counting Descent, and his work as a staff writer at The Atlantic. He’s also a colleague who I befriended while we were studying at Davidson College. Over the years, Smith has considered the ways in which the legacies of slavery have influenced everything from the prison industrial complex to infrastructure bills.
This year, he’s taking on his biggest project yet with the release of his debut nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, which took Smith from Civil War reenactments in Virginia to Juneteenth celebrations in Texas and even slave castles in Senegal to show how we consume, distort and can reshape our paths forward by being honest about our pasts.
It’s coming out at a prescient time where America is realizing how much of our history and our nation’s most valorized leaders have been romanticized and whitewashed of their complicity in the transatlantic slave trade. I sat down with Clint to converse as former classmates and now burgeoning authors to see what has changed and will continue to remain the same.