The Message - Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Message

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

  • Release Date: 2024-10-01
  • Genre: Social Science
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 141 Ratings

Description

#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)

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.

Reviews

  • Must read

    5
    By Hassoon6910
    The author is powerful in reading the story and the struggle of its people. He sees through propaganda as well as the silencing of the Palestinian people and whoever agrees with their narrative. It is a must read for all of.
  • Great read

    5
    By Lefdsks
    This gives your peek into the lives of those who are rarely heard or even ever listened to
  • Truth written with love

    5
    By Goodday2shop
    Incredible up close and personal viewpoint of Israel and Palestine.
  • Beautiful & Brave

    5
    By anusidd
    A short but essential work.
  • Brilliant, Profound, Informative

    5
    By mr.malik
    My sentiment: The Message is a fantastic book by one of my favorite authors. I loved the way he cleverly parallels the Palestinian plight with that of the African American struggle in America (Jim Crow South, police brutality, systemic institutional racism). While I have been to Israel and the Palestine areas, Coates provides a profound insight into the separatist culture that exists that many indeed do not have an appreciation of.
  • Brilliant!

    5
    By Bougie Bungu
    Ta-Neshisi Coates has a way of drawing you in to his work and simultaneously challenging you to inspect your perspective and experiences to ensure that you are in a mode of learning and growing while reading this amazing piece of work.