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mediaevalmuse 's review for:
The Message
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
informative
reflective
The subject matter of this book - the way stories are told and how they shape our understanding of the world - is one of my academic interests, so I picked up Coates's book from my library.
The first thing that struck me was the elegance of Coates's prose and the author's success in putting big, abstract concepts into something more tangible. Coates talks at length about the challenge of writing itself and the role it has in the world, and I found his metaphors and focus on the human to be both beautiful and vivid.
From there, I was deeply captivated by the blend of travel writing, journalism, and personal essay. Coates talks about his visits to Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine, not only describing how it felt to be in those places and interact with people, but how their stories challenged him to rethink the narratives he had been told from a young age. This combination was, in my opinion, fairly effective; I felt like Coates was both uplifting the voices of the people he talked to while also inserting the personal, connecting himself to the world by a fine thread.
In this, Coates's book is not an academic discussion about how language and mythmaking work. Though he does incorporate secondary sources, Coates is less interested in dissecting the phenomenon from the perceived distance of "academic objectivity" and more interested in making his points resonate with the human in all of us. That may sound a little hokey, but one of the big takeaways of this book is that narratives and stories (particularly in journalism) have a tendency to appear objective when they are really the opposite, and we shouldn't let journalistic language obscure the moral part of us that should condemn things like colonialism and apartheid and violence.
I don't have many criticisms, just those that are a little picky. I would have appreciated a conclusion to this book rather than just having it end after the last essay. I also would have liked some clearer citations on some sources, but I'm probably falling into a trap that Coates cautions against.
TL;DR: The Message is a moving and deeply compelling exploration of the way language, stories, and mythmaking shapes the way people perceive and experience the world.
The first thing that struck me was the elegance of Coates's prose and the author's success in putting big, abstract concepts into something more tangible. Coates talks at length about the challenge of writing itself and the role it has in the world, and I found his metaphors and focus on the human to be both beautiful and vivid.
From there, I was deeply captivated by the blend of travel writing, journalism, and personal essay. Coates talks about his visits to Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine, not only describing how it felt to be in those places and interact with people, but how their stories challenged him to rethink the narratives he had been told from a young age. This combination was, in my opinion, fairly effective; I felt like Coates was both uplifting the voices of the people he talked to while also inserting the personal, connecting himself to the world by a fine thread.
In this, Coates's book is not an academic discussion about how language and mythmaking work. Though he does incorporate secondary sources, Coates is less interested in dissecting the phenomenon from the perceived distance of "academic objectivity" and more interested in making his points resonate with the human in all of us. That may sound a little hokey, but one of the big takeaways of this book is that narratives and stories (particularly in journalism) have a tendency to appear objective when they are really the opposite, and we shouldn't let journalistic language obscure the moral part of us that should condemn things like colonialism and apartheid and violence.
I don't have many criticisms, just those that are a little picky. I would have appreciated a conclusion to this book rather than just having it end after the last essay. I also would have liked some clearer citations on some sources, but I'm probably falling into a trap that Coates cautions against.
TL;DR: The Message is a moving and deeply compelling exploration of the way language, stories, and mythmaking shapes the way people perceive and experience the world.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs, Racism, Colonisation
Minor: Genocide, Gun violence, Slavery, Violence, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, War