“How the Word is Passed” is a hard book to confine to a genre. The author, Clint Smith, is a poet, journalist and academic, and all three of these disciplines shape the book. “How the Word is Passed” is a series of first-person narration of Smith’s visits to sites marked by American slavery — Virginia and Texas, New York and Senegal, from presidential mansions to confederate graveyards.

Smith’s lexicon is a poet’s: ambulances do not pass or wail, they maze through streets, “howling a loud and urgent incantation.” His practice, though, falls into the journalistic and academic. As lyrical as his word choices can be, the interactions are precise. He makes careful observations of people’s appearance and quotes them at length — documented on a digital recorder, he tells the reader early, his methodology and the circumstance of all his interviews is explained throughout. These interactions are contextualized with writings from Du Boise, Confederate documents, the words of the formerly enslaved. Where necessary in the text he includes footnotes, and to supplement he has pages of notation on sourcing at the end.

Smith is no passive observer – he documents his own thoughts just as carefully as those of his interviewees, including when he disputes what they are saying.  The book feels as personal as it is poetic, especially the concluding interviews with Smith’s own grandparents. At the same time, for all the lyricism and reflection, the book feels spare and exact. Perhaps this is, in part, because Smith lets his subjects speak for themselves. While he makes it clear when he disagrees with them, he still gives them ample to speak in their own voices. There is also a reflexive journalistic fairness throughout, he frequently gives those who disagree with his interviewees a right of reply.The result is a book that is personal without feeling like the author privileges his own perspective.

This space creates an invitation for the reader to explore further. It lays out slices of the modern world inextricably shaped by America’s national sin and says, this is what I observed. Now look for yourself.