The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates is my first of his full-length work since I read Between the World and Me during undergrad, and while this book wasn’t as transformative as that one for me, this is a crucial perspective on the current moment. Between the attack on education, the post-2020 reaction of Black Lives Matter, Zionism, and the war on Palestine, Coates draws interesting connections between historical myths and how we tell stories (and more importantly, who we let tell those stories).
During my reading, many of the threads felt very loosely connected, but I thought they came together expertly. This is kind of a travel writing, where the places Coates goes are either haunted by the past and/or currently under massive systems of oppression. In a moment like the one we’re in, Coates bravely paints a portrait of life on the ground in small-town United States, the African coast, and occupied Palestine, interjecting his own reflections on his role as a writer and journalist. The book was a bit of a slow start for me, but by the end I couldn’t put it down. Coates is one of the best nonfiction writers we have!
4/5