I got this on audio, where it was narrated by a full cast, but I think I'll buy a physical copy too. At the time of publication, it has been 400 years since the first Africans were abducted and forced into slavery in the US. The editors have broken these 400 years down into 5-year segments. I originally thought the writers were going to cover what happened in each section of five years they wrote about. Instead, they sometimes picked a major theme or topic happening during that time period to focus their essay or poem around. There's a lot here that wasn't covered in my history class/books.