noahreadbookgood 's review for:

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

5.0

challenging dark hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

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This book, a compilation of Coates' essays published in The Atlantic with added chapters describing his headspace, the history surrounding and leading up to the articles, and more, is like a flashlight shined on the old and present problem of racism in America. The articles are good on their own, and accessible elsewhere, I'm sure, but the choice of articles with the added context of Coates' notes for each one help solidify them into a larger story of the Obama administration, how aspects of it and how America reacted felt from Coates' ever-clear perspective, and how America's deepest sin was spurred into action by it. Despite how it seems Coates himself feels, to me books like this create hope for a future where we really have ended racism, if not any time soon then at least at some point. I say that confidently because work like this exists, work so elucidating on the presence of racism, how it has not left us in the way many of us might have thought, and how it still works. In bubbling out of the ground in response to the Obama administration, the vestiges of white supremacy have entered the sunlight. It is now where we can all see it, and one day finish it for good.