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mikelchartier 's review for:
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
A collection of essays that in the hands of a less talented writer would be a gimmicky cash grab, We Were Eight Years In Power synthesizes what makes Ta-Nehisi Coates such an important writer in the 21st century. By applying a Reconstruction lens as pretext to the collection and notes on each essay representing a year Barack Obama was in office, the reader is given the opportunity to examine old information with new perspective.
Of this collection I had read perhaps three individually as published in The Atlantic. And while they're discretely engaging, eye-opening, and wildly informative, reading them all in a centralized location highlights that Coates does virtually zero analysis of the experience of black women outside of anecdotes about his partner and the occasional quip about a particular wrongdoing being a worse experience for WOC. The majority of his approach is implied as the black male experience. Perhaps he prefers to stay in his lane but the person considered to have taken up Baldwin's intellectual mantle should be able to attempt the approach in more than passing.
But if you're looking for craft and content, or form that is inextricable from function, and prose that soars to the sky more often than not, read anything you can get your hands on authored by this man. If you only have the time for a few here the highlights (for this white guy) are The Case For Reparations and The Black Family In The Age Of Incarceration.
Of this collection I had read perhaps three individually as published in The Atlantic. And while they're discretely engaging, eye-opening, and wildly informative, reading them all in a centralized location highlights that Coates does virtually zero analysis of the experience of black women outside of anecdotes about his partner and the occasional quip about a particular wrongdoing being a worse experience for WOC. The majority of his approach is implied as the black male experience. Perhaps he prefers to stay in his lane but the person considered to have taken up Baldwin's intellectual mantle should be able to attempt the approach in more than passing.
But if you're looking for craft and content, or form that is inextricable from function, and prose that soars to the sky more often than not, read anything you can get your hands on authored by this man. If you only have the time for a few here the highlights (for this white guy) are The Case For Reparations and The Black Family In The Age Of Incarceration.