Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set off 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. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates's own books. And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we've accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians--the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. 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 nationalist myths that shape our world--and our own souls--and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
|