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A review by analenegrace
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
challenging
informative
I was fortunate enough to meet Clint Smith and get a free signed copy at a university book event over a year ago, but I just now got to reading it. Smith is an amazing writer whose poetry clearly influences his prose, and it is written in such a compelling and beautiful book, even with the difficult subject matter.
I cannot recommend reading this book, especially if you're trying to deconstruct what racism in America looks like. While there are so many lines I marked as pivotal to the book, the most important comes on page 289 in his epilogue,
"The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories."
I cannot recommend reading this book, especially if you're trying to deconstruct what racism in America looks like. While there are so many lines I marked as pivotal to the book, the most important comes on page 289 in his epilogue,
"The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Police brutality, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, War, and Classism