How the Phrase Is Handed

Prompt #1 New York Occasions bestseller

Longlisted for the 2021 Nationwide Ebook Award for Nonfiction

Starting in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—these which can be sincere concerning the previous and people that aren’t—that supply an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective historical past, and ourselves.

It’s the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the property the place Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the pressing want for liberty whereas enslaving greater than 4 hundred folks. It’s the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of many solely former plantations dedicated to preserving the expertise of the enslaved folks whose lives and work sustained it. It’s the story of Angola, a former plantation–turned–maximum-security jail in Louisiana that’s full of Black males who work throughout the 18,000-acre land for nearly no pay. And it’s the story of Blandford Cemetery, the ultimate resting place of tens of hundreds of Accomplice troopers.

A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American historical past, How the Phrase Is Handed illustrates how a few of our nation’s most important tales are hidden in plain view—whether or not in locations we would drive by on our technique to work, holidays corresponding to Juneteenth, or complete neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, the place the brutal historical past of the commerce in enslaved males, girls, and kids has been deeply imprinted.

Knowledgeable by scholarship and dropped at life by the story of individuals dwelling in the present day, Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and perception that gives a brand new understanding of the hopeful position that reminiscence and historical past can play in making sense of our nation and the way it has come to be.