The Message
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The renowned author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities.
“Ta-Nehisi Coates always writes with a purpose. . . . These pilgrimages, for him, help ground his powerful writing about race.”—Associated Press
“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)
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Vanity Fair, Town & Country, Electric Lit
Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out 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.
In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city—a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.
Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
“Ta-Nehisi Coates always writes with a purpose. . . . These pilgrimages, for him, help ground his powerful writing about race.”—Associated Press
“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)
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Vanity Fair, Town & Country, Electric Lit
Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out 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.
In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city—a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.
Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
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Readers say *The Message* by Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a profound, nuanced exploration of race, history, and power through poetic language and incisive ...
Thought provoking book. I especially appreciated the final section on Palestine, both for the honest accounting of the genocide and his own personal growth of once invoking Israel in his case for reparations for Black Americans.
It is a bit surreal reading it, though, when he references the Trump admin as something done and to be corrected. I hope Coates revisits these places (Palestine notwithstanding) now that there is a second admin and foreign relations are tanking.
I was blown away by this book. The depth of his thinking about race has layers and nuance. He speaks about several cultures and how the complexities of oppression impact those communities. His language is so rich. There is a reason his works have received so many accolades.
I am trying new things outside my wheelhouse and as I have 9 black grandchildren I want to be well educated in all things that the world has to offer. I love them to end of time but as a white Nana I do not know or experience the same things in a way they would, so all I can do sometimes is hold them tell them I love them and try as best as I can to educate my self and them by reading books like this one.
Thank you so much Mr. Coates
Thank you so much Mr. Coates
A soul shaking book by Ta-Nehisi Coates mostly talking about his time with his trip to Palestine he made parallels to the Palestinian atrocities and injustices to the African Americans today .He highlighted the hypocrisy and the apartheid others deny in the importance of telling the truth.
Coates writes so beautifully while he reveals long denied truths. Truths so many will not see and truths so many benefit from hiding. This book opened my eyes to a completely new view of apartheid, reparations, and even American “ideals.” Brilliant, heartbreaking, and altering.
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