The Message
October 4, 2024 2:31 PM - Subscribe

Ta-Nehisi Coates structures this set of essays as letters to his students on the purpose of writing, and grappling with questions on how reporting and narratives are structured, define and distort reality. Coates' bibliography for the Israel/Palestine essay.

The front-page discussion is not particularly focused on the actual book, thought we would bring that here.
posted by toastyk (4 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Something about the way he casually put in a quote from Jamal Khashoggi made me smile when I read it. I just finished the book this morning and am now doing a re-reading with sticky notes. I think this is his best writing so far.

Like this sentence about his parents, it doesn't tell their whole story but in just one line it says so much:
We live in a row house up on Park Heights, which my parents rent by the week, and making that weekly rent is the hardest thing they will ever do.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:03 PM on October 4 [4 favorites]


Some non-racist criticism from Jay Caspian Kang on the Message, and how he thinks the pressure to always be political, significant, or weighty leads to leaden, predictable prose. I didn't finish listening to it yet, but it is also discussed on his podcast Time to Say Goodbye. I'm still mulling it over in my head, so I will come back to this thread.
posted by toastyk at 8:07 AM on October 5


Kang is such a hater. I agree with many things he says but he is so clearly driven by being contrary I just finally lost interest in his work. If this was an occasional thing.. great. People on the left should critique the left. But it seems to me this is his entire project.
posted by latkes at 11:00 PM on October 5


I finished listening to the podcast episode and I think you're probably right, latkes. I think he's pretty uncomfortable when people are actually sincere about the things they are doing, even if he ultimately agrees with them.

Anyway, with regards to the book itself, I find it difficult to pull out any particular thread, the whole book itself is so good. This part, I thought was very powerful:

History is not inert but contains within it a story that implicates or justifies political order. So it was with Josiah Nott looking back to Ancient Egypt to justify slavery. And so it is with the American Revolution and the founding of a great republic, or the Greatest Generation who did not fight to defend merely the homeland but the entire world. If you believe that history, then you are primed to believe that the American state is a force for good, that it is the world's oldest democracy, and that those who hate America hate it for its freedoms. And if you believe that, then you can believe that these inexplicable haters of freedom are worthy of our drones. But a different history, one that finds its starting point in genocide and slavery, argues for a much darker present and the possibility that here too are haters of freedom, unworthy of the power they wield.
posted by toastyk at 7:04 AM on October 6 [4 favorites]


« Older The Golden Bachelorette: Las V...   |  My So-Called Life: Dancing in ... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments