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lesserjoke 's review for:
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
A powerful collection of essays on race and racism in America, reflecting the author's evolving understanding of these issues over the eight years of the Obama presidency. Half of these entries are drawn, roughly one per year, from articles originally published in The Atlantic; the rest have been newly written for this volume in the dawn of the Trump administration. Throughout, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes movingly and convincingly on the historical forces of racial injustice that survive today, the ways in which the unique figure of Barack Obama has navigated them, and how they have ultimately led us to his successor in the Oval Office.
It's as meditative and elegiac as the title suggests, using a racial lens to examine both the triumphs and flaws of the Obama White House but especially to mourn its passing. Yet despite that focus, the language is less poetic than the author's earlier work Between the World and Me, which I personally appreciate. This is an accessible book for all of us who have had our eyes opened over the course of the past decade, and it deserves to be read widely.
It's as meditative and elegiac as the title suggests, using a racial lens to examine both the triumphs and flaws of the Obama White House but especially to mourn its passing. Yet despite that focus, the language is less poetic than the author's earlier work Between the World and Me, which I personally appreciate. This is an accessible book for all of us who have had our eyes opened over the course of the past decade, and it deserves to be read widely.