How the Word Is Passed

"How the Word Is Passed" explores how slavery shaped America’s foundations and how its legacy still influences modern society. Through visits to historic sites and conversations with historians and descendants, Clint Smith challenges myths that minimize slavery’s role in American prosperity and identity. The book argues that honest reckoning with this history is essential to understanding present-day racial inequality and achieving genuine racial justice.

Clint Smith is a poet, essayist, and scholar known for his powerful explorations of race, identity, and historical trauma in American society. Smith earned his Ph.D. in English from Harvard University and has taught at universities including Yale and Hunter College. His work combines rigorous historical research with personal narrative and lyrical prose, creating essays and books that are simultaneously intellectually sophisticated and deeply moving. Smith's previous collection of essays, "Hunger," explores identity, relationships, and meaning, establishing him as a distinctive voice in contemporary American letters. "How the Word Is Passed" represents Smith's most sustained historical and journalistic work, reflecting years of travel, research, and conversations with historians, educators, and community members across the United States and internationally. The book's success—becoming a bestseller and widely adopted in educational settings—reflects Smith's ability to make complex historical analysis accessible while maintaining emotional resonance and moral seriousness. Smith's writing is characterized by careful attention to language, recognition of historical complexity, and commitment to centering the perspectives of those whose stories have been marginalized or suppressed in dominant historical narratives. His work contributes significantly to contemporary conversations about how Americans understand their history and the relationship between historical understanding and contemporary social justice.