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melanie_dc 's review for:
I saved this book to be my first read of 2022, fully expecting it be one of my top books of the year. It's received so many accolades, and I went in with huge expectations. I'm happy to say that the book lived up to every one of my expectations and still surprised me in so many ways. In a word, it's extraordinary.
Author Clint Smith (who lives here in my town of Silver Spring, Maryland!) has given us a book that tells the history of slavery in the U.S. from many angles, while exploring how we think about it—and bury its truths—in modern day. There's a paragraph toward the end that really hit me with its obvious truth but a truth that so many of us have never heard, and may not want to accept. I'm paraphrasing, but it's essentially: Slavery is not a part of U.S. history. It IS U.S. history. Our country was founded, developed, grew, fought and killed over the desire to kidnap and enslave Africans to ensure capitalism's success. That's a fact.
In the book, Smith visits 7 slavery-related sites in the U.S., telling us the history of the site—both that which is told and that which is hidden, distorted or not discussed—and his own reaction to visiting the site. Smith is a poet and this is his first nonfiction book. It's a masterpiece, and his poetic language shines while sharing his emotions, thoughts and the horrific history of our country.
We learn how Monticello Plantation—not just Monticello; it was indeed a plantation filled with enslaved people—began to change its narrative as it came to reckon with Jefferson's enslavement of people. We go with Smith when he attends a pro-Confederacy event at Blandford Cemetery, as he bravely interviews attendees twisting themselves into knots to defend the Confederacy and claim the Civil War was never about slavery. Ironically, these individuals believe that we were taught inaccurate history that the South was fighting to keep people enslaved. It was about states' rights, they say.
The most horrifying chapter might be the tour of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a prison with a gift shop, built on plantation land, where Black men (now prisoners) still toil away under the hot sun in the fields. The prison guards and townspeople don't seem to see the correlation between enslaving Black people and building a prison on the spot—and then purposefully creating an unjust legal system that made it easier to send Black people in the 20th and 21st centuries to prison, creating once again a free labor force for the state. (The details of how those laws were created in Louisiana to do that might be the most surprising and horrifying new lesson I learned about.)
This book is a history book, but it's not a textbook. It's a powerful first-person account of a Black man who grew up in New Orleans, told through on-the-scene interviews and impeccable research, of our appalling history that still affects so much of the way of life in the U.S. today. Please read it.
Author Clint Smith (who lives here in my town of Silver Spring, Maryland!) has given us a book that tells the history of slavery in the U.S. from many angles, while exploring how we think about it—and bury its truths—in modern day. There's a paragraph toward the end that really hit me with its obvious truth but a truth that so many of us have never heard, and may not want to accept. I'm paraphrasing, but it's essentially: Slavery is not a part of U.S. history. It IS U.S. history. Our country was founded, developed, grew, fought and killed over the desire to kidnap and enslave Africans to ensure capitalism's success. That's a fact.
In the book, Smith visits 7 slavery-related sites in the U.S., telling us the history of the site—both that which is told and that which is hidden, distorted or not discussed—and his own reaction to visiting the site. Smith is a poet and this is his first nonfiction book. It's a masterpiece, and his poetic language shines while sharing his emotions, thoughts and the horrific history of our country.
We learn how Monticello Plantation—not just Monticello; it was indeed a plantation filled with enslaved people—began to change its narrative as it came to reckon with Jefferson's enslavement of people. We go with Smith when he attends a pro-Confederacy event at Blandford Cemetery, as he bravely interviews attendees twisting themselves into knots to defend the Confederacy and claim the Civil War was never about slavery. Ironically, these individuals believe that we were taught inaccurate history that the South was fighting to keep people enslaved. It was about states' rights, they say.
The most horrifying chapter might be the tour of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a prison with a gift shop, built on plantation land, where Black men (now prisoners) still toil away under the hot sun in the fields. The prison guards and townspeople don't seem to see the correlation between enslaving Black people and building a prison on the spot—and then purposefully creating an unjust legal system that made it easier to send Black people in the 20th and 21st centuries to prison, creating once again a free labor force for the state. (The details of how those laws were created in Louisiana to do that might be the most surprising and horrifying new lesson I learned about.)
This book is a history book, but it's not a textbook. It's a powerful first-person account of a Black man who grew up in New Orleans, told through on-the-scene interviews and impeccable research, of our appalling history that still affects so much of the way of life in the U.S. today. Please read it.