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Thanks to @librofm for providing free audiobooks like this one to teachers through their ALC program! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ “I'm left wondering if we are all just patchworks of the stories we've been told. What would it take - what does it take - for you to confront a false history even if it means shattering the stories you have been told throughout your life? Even if it means having to fundamentally reexamine who you are and who your family has been? Just because something is difficult to accept doesn't mean you should refuse to accept it. Just because someone tells you a story doesn't make that story true.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Listening to How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America isn’t the first time I’ve come across Clint Smith. I use his TED Talk “The Power of Silence” with my students during our unit on Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, so I couldn’t wait to pick this book up. Fortunately, I had to wait a bit: fortunate because my reading of this book lined up with teaching our unit on Kindred by Octavia Butler. For those who don’t know, Kindred is a book about importance of history and memory - a counter narrative to stories we tell about slavery. Listening to How the Word is Passed reframed my thinking about Kindred, a book that I’ve taught for years. It reenergized me and reminded me that the conversations that we have with students about these topics are formative to their contextualization not only of the past, but of the present and of their place within it. I couldn’t stop talking about this book to anyone who would listen - coworkers, friends, my mom - and now that I’m done, I can’t stop thinking about how to incorporate it into my classroom! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ID I’m holding a kindle displaying the ebook cover of How the Word is passed against a wall with shadows across it. via Instagram https://instagr.am/p/CUm5qQgLkCi/