SSFPL Book Club - The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

ABOUT THE BOOK

Ta-Nehisi Coates presents three blazing essays on race, moral complicity, and a storyteller's responsibility to the truth. Coates evokes his father's struggle with the wretched narrative legacy of Jim Crow. He travels to South Carolina, where school districts seek to ban his work for suggesting that America was "fundamentally racist," or any other "divisive concept." Coates concludes that "it is neither 'anguish' nor 'discomfort' that these people were trying to prohibit, it was enlightenment." Finally, he connects the dots between the self-justifying narratives of European and American racism and Palestinian oppression in Israel. Going to Palestine is like time traveling back to Jim Crow: IDF soldiers with "sun glinting off their shades like Georgia sheriffs" harass Palestinians at checkpoints, proving that "as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere." Dehumanization is essential to exploitation, whether the targets are serfs in medieval Europe, African slaves and their descendants in America, or Palestinians on the West Bank.

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, born September 30, 1975, is an American author, journalist, and activist. He gained a wide readership during his time as a national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Between the World and Me, winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Coates is a MacArthur "Genius Grant" fellow, has received the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, and the George Polk Award for his Atlantic cover story "The Case for Reparations." He has published three other nonfiction books: The Beautiful Struggle (2008), We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (2017), and The Message (2024). He has also written a Black Panther series and a Captain America series for Marvel Comics. His first novel, The Water Dancer, was published in 2019. 

Coates is currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department at Howard University. He lives in New York with his wife and son.  

 

When

Location

2nd Floor, Community Room

Library | Parks & Recreation Center, 901 Civic Campus Way, 94080, View Map