Found out that students at my old high school are reading How the Word Is Passed in class, and as someone who wrote this book largely because it’s the sort of book I wish I had when I was in my American history class back then, this really means more than almost anything.
The more I reflect on this, the more I think about 16-year-old me, who was inundated with messages—both implicit and explicit—about all the things society said were wrong with Black people, without being given the historical context to understand the racial disparities around me.
I knew what I was hearing was wrong, but I didn’t know how to *say* it was wrong. I didn’t have the language or historical framework with which to name the lies this country tells of itself. A country that’s long told Black folks that the disparities we experience are our fault.
People often ask about who the intended audience of this book is, and the honest answer is that it was written for the kid I was in high school. I wanted a book that would fill in the gaps in his education, that would have given him what he needed to see this county more clearly.
So the idea that there are kids in my old high school in New Orleans, sitting in the same classrooms I once sat in, reading a book that I wrote for the person I was when I sat in those desks myself—it’s just remarkable to think about.
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