Overview

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me travels the world to explore how the stories we tell--and the ones we don't--shape our realities. Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories-our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking-expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist-and named for Nubian pharaoh-Coates had never set foot on the African continent until finally he traveled to the coast of the dark ocean that carried the enslaved to a new world. He roams the ""steampunk"" city of ""old traditions and new machinery,"" meeting with strangers-fabric sellers and street hustlers-and dining with Francophone writers who quiz him on African American politics. But everywhere he goes he feels as if he's in two places at once- a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all black people. Eventually he travels to the slave castles off the coast-and his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream. In Palestine, the longest of the essays, he discovers the devastating gap between the stories we tell ourselves and the vivid reality on the ground. He travels the singular landscape and meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians--the old, who remember their dispossession, and the young who dream of revolution. He travels into Jerusalem where he is told a story of this contested land that justifies its conquest; he travels to the West Bank to see the reality that the myth is meant to hide, one that parallels his own ancestral memories of the segregationist south. It is the hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him--and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating. The final essay takes place back in the USA-in Columbia, South Carolina, where Coates visits a school district in the process of banning one of his books. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened and her community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalized by the ""racial reckoning"" of 2020. But he also explores the deeper myths and stories of that city-a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over the city's public squares. Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country's most important writers eloquently expresses the need to interrogate our myths and liberate our truths.

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9780593916414

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Reviews

Praise for The Message “Coates presents three blazing essays on race, moral complicity, and a storyteller’s responsibility to the truth. . . . Coates exhorts readers, including students, parents, educators, and journalists, to challenge conventional narratives that can be used to justify ethnic cleansing or camouflage racist policing. Brilliant and timely.”—Booklist, starred review “Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal . . . Chapin, South Carolina, . . . and to Israel and Palestine . . . Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual . . . A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review Praise for Ta-Nehisi Coates “[Coates] is intellectually fearless . . . unshackled by political or racial ideology, humane in his judgments, respectful of facts, acutely aware of the difference between what is knowable and what is not.”—The New Yorker “Anyone who wants to know who we are—and where we are now—must sit with [Coates] for a good while.”—The New York Times Book Review “Coates is frequently lauded as one of America’s most important writers on the subject of race today, but this in fact undersells him: Coates is one of America’s most important writers on the subject of America today.”—Slate “[Coates’s] prose style and literary prowess are hip-hop sharpened: he believes in the art of dexterous reference, potent, lyrical critique and political storytelling. . . . As the best critics do, Coates draws us into conversation, into argument, rather than closing off discourse with canned proclamations or static resolutions.”—The Baltimore Sun

Praise for Ta-Nehisi Coates “[Coates] is intellectually fearless . . . unshackled by political or racial ideology, humane in his judgments, respectful of facts, acutely aware of the difference between what is knowable and what is not.”—The New Yorker “Anyone who wants to know who we are—and where we are now—must sit with [Coates] for a good while.”—The New York Times Book Review “Coates is frequently lauded as one of America’s most important writers on the subject of race today, but this in fact undersells him: Coates is one of America’s most important writers on the subject of America today.”—Slate “[Coates’s] prose style and literary prowess are hip-hop sharpened: he believes in the art of dexterous reference, potent, lyrical critique and political storytelling. . . . As the best critics do, Coates draws us into conversation, into argument, rather than closing off discourse with canned proclamations or static resolutions.”—The Baltimore Sun

Praise for Ta-Nehisi Coates “[Coates] is intellectually fearless . . . unshackled by political or racial ideology, humane in his judgments, respectful of facts, acutely aware of the difference between what is knowable and what is not.”—The New Yorker “Anyone who wants to know who we are—and where we are now—must sit with [Coates] for a good while.”—The New York Times Book Review “Coates is frequently lauded as one of America’s most important writers on the subject of race today, but this in fact undersells him: Coates is one of America’s most important writers on the subject of America today.”—Slate “[Coates’s] prose style and literary prowess are hip-hop sharpened: he believes in the art of dexterous reference, potent, lyrical critique and political storytelling. . . . As the best critics do, Coates draws us into conversation, into argument, rather than closing off discourse with canned proclamations or static resolutions.”—The Baltimore Sun “Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal . . . Chapin, South Carolina, . . . and to Israel and Palestine . . . Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual . . . A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“An earnest and intimate exploration of locations of extreme injustice, and of the power of writing to render a more compassionate—and more honest—future . . . At once a rallying cry and a love letter to writing itself, the book is an urgent reminder that ‘politics is the art of the possible, but art creates the possible of politics.’ ”—Oprah Daily   “Ever since his Baldwin-inflected Between the World and Me, Coates has been known for his incisive (and sometimes uncomfortable) cultural and political commentary. Here he journeys from West Africa to the American South to Palestine to examine how the stories we tell can fail us, and to argue that only the truth can bring justice.”—The Boston Globe   “Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates returns with a powerful critique on modern American society. With his signature incisiveness, Coates interrogates the intersections of race, power, and identity while blending historical insight and personal reflection. Through three essays, Coates presents a global perspective that challenges the status quo and dares us to envision a more just future.”—SheReads   “With the game-changing success of his essay/memoir Between the World and Me, anything [Coates] writes will immediately command attention. Here he grapples with the power and danger of storytelling, the too easy way of shaping and softening reality. Coates travels to Africa, to South Carolina, and—in the longest piece—Palestine to observe how rarely life as it is lived fits into the stories we want to tell ourselves.”—Parade “Coates presents three blazing essays on race, moral complicity, and a storyteller’s responsibility to the truth. . . . Coates exhorts readers, including students, parents, educators, and journalists, to challenge conventional narratives that can be used to justify ethnic cleansing or camouflage racist policing. Brilliant and timely.”—Booklist, starred review “Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal . . . Chapin, South Carolina, . . . and to Israel and Palestine . . . Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual . . . A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Author Information

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Ta-Nehisi lives in New York City with his wife and son.

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