The poems in this collection are beautiful and sharp, reflecting Smith’s experience as a black man growing up in a society determined to distrust black men. It’s a sober topic but he also brings beauty and joy into the poems, and also defiant pride in his heritage and his home town of New Orleans. Favorites included what the cicada said to the black boy, about survival and hiding, and the titular Counting Descent, which encapsulates his family history in numbers.
Tag: author-clint smith
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, by Clint Smith
I cannot tell you how good this book was. Smith dives deeply into plantations, memorials, cemeteries, prisons, and his own family oral history; he gathers viewpoints directly from docents and other visitors, and lets their words stand next to what facts can be gleaned from the historical record. He talks with people who have set ideas on what their history is, and with those who are still open to learning more; he interrogates the stories that Americans tell themselves about their shared history, and where those stories originated (very often as propaganda). He wanders through the American landscape as if it’s a crime scene, which it very much is; not only were horrific crimes committed here against so many, but the crime against Black America is still unfolding, and the weight of it affects everything we do and defines who we are. The narration is often punctuated by piercing insights, and the prose is just beautiful. Truly amazing portrait of how far we’ve come, where we are now, and how far we have yet to go in reckoning with the impact of slavery in America.