What We Are Reading Today

FROM AROUND THE WEB & IN PRINT How the Word is Passed

How the Word is Passed is a book that deserves a place in today’s high school and college curriculum as well as personal reading libraries, says a review on goodreads.com.

“It is truly extraordinary,” said the review.

In How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith seeks to examine how America memorializes, and reckons, with the legacy of slavery.

Smith is staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Smith is also a poet, and he weaves his narrative with the prose of a poet in such a lyrical and impactful way.

According to the review, Smith “travels to different plantations, memorials, cemeteries, museums, prisons, etc. and examines how each of these locations reckon with slavery and if they are being honest and truthful, or being dishonest and avoiding the past.”

“This is not a contemporary anti-racist book. It goes far behind history. How the Word Is Passed is about the experience of place, memory, and legacy,” said

the review.