I'd read some of Clint Smith's poetry collection Counting Descent (2016) in my AP Literature and Composition class in 2023-2024. But this book blew me out of the water. So thoroughly researched and personal, yet also expansive, reaching from Senegal across the Middle Passage to New York, Virginia, and Louisiana.
I went on a cross-country trip in 2023 and stopped in Virginia to see Monticello and the University of Virginia, so I really appreciated the chapter about Monticello and Jefferson's relationship to slavery. While my general Monticello tour made it clear that there would be no Monticello nor many of Jefferson's famous writings without slavery, this book expounded upon that by arguing that it was because of his slaveholding, not in spite of it, that Jefferson was as successful as he became. Now I cannot picture Jefferson without picturing the over 600 people Jefferson enslaved over the course of his life, as well as how he sold them at will to pay off his debts.
I am now interested in taking many of the tours/trips that Smith took, and I also want to own this book because I have a feeling I will be reflecting on it for years to come.