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leonardtalbot 's review for:
The Message
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Do yourself a favor and read this book. I am flabbergasted by the humility of such a genuinely talented author and his ability to enlighten without belittling the reader. This is a grouping of writings mostly focused on his self realization that what we read is not always as it is. We follow him to Senegal, an African American man visiting his family's native land. His journey while there but mostly the realization that his preconception was not fully accurate. There is a section about book banning and in particular his journey with this and how this both affects him as a purveyor and what he believes our reasoning for doing so are. But the power of this novel lives in it's final act, his trip to Palestine.
As an American that was born in the 1980s and having grown up alongside the invention of many social platforms, I can profess that facts are secondary but most importantly the power of the pen is real. His trip was litered with enlightenment about the hard reality of the Palestinian people but most acutely the fact that our writers who inform us of the troubles within their border walls are almost entirely penned by journalists who they themselves are not Palestinian. I am not going to be able to bring the brevity and voice Ta-Nehisi delivers us in these pages but it was quite a journey for me to second guess what I believe to be true and lean in to diligence in the consumption of our world's most pressing issues.
Coates' voice is poignant and narrow. His beliefs are always teeming on the pages he writes but it is his willingness to exemplify humility that makes this book so powerful. If our leaders could think as critically as this man the impact on our social constructs would be immeasurably changed.
As an American that was born in the 1980s and having grown up alongside the invention of many social platforms, I can profess that facts are secondary but most importantly the power of the pen is real. His trip was litered with enlightenment about the hard reality of the Palestinian people but most acutely the fact that our writers who inform us of the troubles within their border walls are almost entirely penned by journalists who they themselves are not Palestinian. I am not going to be able to bring the brevity and voice Ta-Nehisi delivers us in these pages but it was quite a journey for me to second guess what I believe to be true and lean in to diligence in the consumption of our world's most pressing issues.
Coates' voice is poignant and narrow. His beliefs are always teeming on the pages he writes but it is his willingness to exemplify humility that makes this book so powerful. If our leaders could think as critically as this man the impact on our social constructs would be immeasurably changed.