‘How the Word Is Passed’: The stories we tell about race

Poet and Atlantic staff writer Clint Smith, in his new book “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America,” has created something subtle and extraordinary. In its pages are a combination of historical insight and personal discovery perhaps best described by a word from his own title: “reckoning.” The author, who is Black and grew up in New Orleans, visits several slavery-haunted sites in America. These include the