How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
by Clint Smith
Award History
| Award | Year | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dayton Literary Peace Prize – Nonfiction | 2022 | Winner |
About This Book
Clint Smith travels to sites across the United States—Louisiana plantations, Angola Prison, Blandford Cemetery in Virginia, the Whitney Plantation, Galveston Island, and others—to explore how American memory of slavery has been preserved, denied, and contested. Through conversations with guides, historians, and ordinary people, he maps the ways America does and does not reckon with its foundational crime. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction.
About the Author
Clint Smith is an American poet, writer, and staff writer at The Atlantic whose work focuses on the intersections of race, history, and American memory. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he earned his BA from Davidson College and his PhD in Education from Harvard University, where his dissertation examined the ways teachers discuss race and racism in the classroom. His debut nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (2021), won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Stowe Prize, and the Heartland Prize, among many others. Read more →
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