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The Message
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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.
Ta-Nehisi 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, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the "steampunk" city of "old traditions and new machinery," 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. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.
He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates's own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the "racial reckoning" of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community--a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.
And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we've accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians--the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him--and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.
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 nationalist myths that shape our world--and our own souls--and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780593230381
- ISBN-10: 0593230388
- Publisher: One World
- Publish Date: October 2024
- Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.7 pounds
- Page Count: 256
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National Book Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2015 book Between the World and Me, and his 2017 essay collection, We Were Eight Years in Power, exposed the impact of slavery and Jim Crow on our understanding of America’s origins and its present. Written with clarity and forensic objectivity, his revolutionary insights into our society challenged us to not only acknowledge this past but also actively redress its lasting harms. His new book, The Message, is personal and introspective; four related but standalone essays chronicle Coates’ own revelations about the role stories play in shaping and misshaping our perceptions of the world. Coates argues that writing is both an artistic and a political act: Authors must write with clarity and create narratives that explain and expose the world with urgency—and they must examine the stories we have been told as well as those we tell ourselves. How do authors extract truth from history, separate myth from fact? Coates travels to the Senegalese island of Gorée, which is prominent for its perceived significance in the slave trade. He acknowledges it as a “mythical site of departure”: According to scholars, very few enslaved people actually passed through its infamous Door of No Return. But on the island, Coates had a remarkable epiphany about the ways in which the myth-making about Gorée as “sacred, a symbolic representation of our last stop before the genocide” has obscured the lasting impact of colonialism on Africa. Still, that myth holds unique power: “We have a right to our imagined traditions, to our imagined places,” Coates concludes, “and those traditions and places are most powerful when we confess that they are imagined.” His journey to East Jerusalem and the West Bank brings questions about objective storytelling to the fore, in an essay both heartrending and hopeful. Coates courageously allows the reader to see the confusion, grief and anger he feels observing firsthand how Palestinians are relegated to second class citizenship in a segregated society, all while Israel is hailed as “the only democracy in the Middle East” by the West—a situation which he finds all too familiar. Coates reports learning that illegal settlements steal Palestinian land. He shares meals with both Palestinians and Israelis, including a former Israeli soldier who tells him that Israeli forces subject Palestinians to a “constant threat of violence,” with methods that include home invasions targeting known innocents. Coates reflects on how Palestinian writers are seldom allowed to contribute their voices, and an “elevation of complexity over justice” shapes the narrative about the region. Searching and restless, The Message is filled with startling revelations that show a writer grappling with how his work fits into history and the present moment. Coates believes that writing can change the world. Achieving this mission is arduous, vital and necessary. These masterful essays will leave readers convinced that Coates is up to the task.
National Book Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2015 book Between the World and Me, and his 2017 essay collection, We Were Eight Years in Power, exposed the impact of slavery and Jim Crow on our understanding of America’s origins and its present. Written with clarity and forensic objectivity, his revolutionary insights into our society challenged us to not only acknowledge this past but also actively redress its lasting harms. His new book, The Message, is personal and introspective; four related but standalone essays chronicle Coates’ own revelations about the role stories play in shaping and misshaping our perceptions of the world. Coates argues that writing is both an artistic and a political act: Authors must write with clarity and create narratives that explain and expose the world with urgency—and they must examine the stories we have been told as well as those we tell ourselves. How do authors extract truth from history, separate myth from fact? Coates travels to the Senegalese island of Gorée, which is prominent for its perceived significance in the slave trade. He acknowledges it as a “mythical site of departure”: According to scholars, very few enslaved people actually passed through its infamous Door of No Return. But on the island, Coates had a remarkable epiphany about the ways in which the myth-making about Gorée as “sacred, a symbolic representation of our last stop before the genocide” has obscured the lasting impact of colonialism on Africa. Still, that myth holds unique power: “We have a right to our imagined traditions, to our imagined places,” Coates concludes, “and those traditions and places are most powerful when we confess that they are imagined.” His journey to East Jerusalem and the West Bank brings questions about objective storytelling to the fore, in an essay both heartrending and hopeful. Coates courageously allows the reader to see the confusion, grief and anger he feels observing firsthand how Palestinians are relegated to second class citizenship in a segregated society, all while Israel is hailed as “the only democracy in the Middle East” by the West—a situation which he finds all too familiar. Coates reports learning that illegal settlements steal Palestinian land. He shares meals with both Palestinians and Israelis, including a former Israeli soldier who tells him that Israeli forces subject Palestinians to a “constant threat of violence,” with methods that include home invasions targeting known innocents. Coates reflects on how Palestinian writers are seldom allowed to contribute their voices, and an “elevation of complexity over justice” shapes the narrative about the region. Searching and restless, The Message is filled with startling revelations that show a writer grappling with how his work fits into history and the present moment. Coates believes that writing can change the world. Achieving this mission is arduous, vital and necessary. These masterful essays will leave readers convinced that Coates is up to the task.