In fewer than 400 pages, Clint Smith’s debut work of non-fiction is an intrepid trek covering lots of ground.
Engaging our nation’s “curious institution” – “our un-atoned original sin” – the book purports to examine just eight sites.
New Orleans, the poet-author’s home town; Jefferson’s Monticello; the revisionist tourist attraction at the Whitney Plantation; the infamous maximum security prison at the 16,000-acre Angola Plantation; Blandford Cemetery, a Confederate shrine with Tiffany windows; Galveston Island, commemorating Juneteenth; New York City, enriched by slave-based enterprise; and Gorée Island, with its gate of no return, in Senegal.
All are stops on Smith’s pilgrimage. But because of his scholarly curiosity and zeal, his quest includes many
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