Such a good book. A poet with a background in sociology and teaching travels to a handful of historically significant sites - Monticello (to learn about the contradictions between Thomas Jefferson's ideals and the reality of his enslavement of human beings), a cemetery that hosts present-day fans, New York's sites of enslavement, etc. He relates history and the conversations he had with people he meets at these sites in a conversational, thoughtful, accessible way. The word is passed not through official historical accounts but through the handing down of people's memories, including in a moving epilogue his grandparents' memories of Jim Crow and lynchings and their grandparents' memories of being enslaved. As he writes, "My grandparents' voices are a museum I'm still learning to visit." returnreturnClint Smith is a poet, and I was struck by how often he dwells on words and on voices. It's one of the special things about this book, a kind of attention to the specifics of how words sound, how the choice of a word adds so much meaning.