Ta-Nehisi Coates: Message (2024, Diversified Publishing)
English language
Published 2024 by Diversified Publishing.
An earnest examination of Coates’ self, history, and previous writing, all while traveling through Senegal, North Carolina, and Palestine. Moving and thought-provoking to be sure.
A profound and meaningful book about the responsibilities we take on when we become writers. Coates describes his travels to through the perspective of why he is a writer, the spirits he's carried with him, the reach his words have had, and the times he failed to meet his own high standards while at the same time highlighting injustices and reminding us how to fight against them. Deeply personal and deeply readable.
I came here off the back of that CBS interview, but was surprised to see how the book went. It's really three quite separate essays, held together by a common theme of the stories we tell ourselves, and how important writing and story telling are. The third essay has obviously attracted the most attention and, while it's definitely thought-provoking, I think it really suffers from being too short -- perhaps it should have been a book on its own? One of the principal points of the essay is that we really need more Palestinian voices in the media. The stories we're told matter as they construct our reality.
The tide has certainly shifted in the U.S. when it comes to the conversation around Palestine, and this book is more evidence of this. It is tempting to think that because Coates is the author, this book will somehow break through or crack open the rhetorical situation and allow things to be said that have, to date, been deemed unsayable. But I think that's a dream. Unfortunately, the shift in public conversation has tended to coincide with a ratcheting up of the killing of civilians. Those who think that rhetoric and discourse are an alternative to violence will have to contend with that fact.
"An inhuman system demands inhumans, and so it produces them in stories, editorials, newscasts, movies, and television. Editors and writers like to think that they are not part of such systems, that they are independent, objective, and arrive at their conclusions solely by dint of their …
The tide has certainly shifted in the U.S. when it comes to the conversation around Palestine, and this book is more evidence of this. It is tempting to think that because Coates is the author, this book will somehow break through or crack open the rhetorical situation and allow things to be said that have, to date, been deemed unsayable. But I think that's a dream. Unfortunately, the shift in public conversation has tended to coincide with a ratcheting up of the killing of civilians. Those who think that rhetoric and discourse are an alternative to violence will have to contend with that fact.
"An inhuman system demands inhumans, and so it produces them in stories, editorials, newscasts, movies, and television. Editors and writers like to think that they are not part of such systems, that they are independent, objective, and arrive at their conclusions solely by dint of their reporting and research. But the Palestine I saw bore so little likeness to the stories I read and so much resemblance to the systems I've known that I am left believing that, at least here, this objectivity is self delusion."
