The Message
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Genre
- History, Society & Current Affairs
- Publisher
- One World (Penguin Random House)
- Publication year
- 2024
- ISBN
- 9780593230381
The Message is a work of nonfiction by the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, published by One World in October 2024. In three linked essays it reflects on writing, narrative and power, drawing on travels to Senegal, South Carolina and the West Bank. It was a #1 bestseller and a Los Angeles Times Book...
After years away from the essay, Ta-Nehisi Coates returns with a slim, searching book about the stories we tell and the power they hold. The Message braids three journeys - to Senegal, to a South Carolina school board fighting to ban his own work, and to the Israeli-occupied West Bank - into a meditation on writing, myth-making and the responsibilities of the writer. The final section, on Palestine, drew fierce debate, but the book's deeper subject is how narratives justify power and how honest witness might resist them. Coates writes in the charged, direct prose that made Between the World and Me a landmark, addressing his students and, through them, the reader. intendle recommends it as a provocative, personal reckoning that rewards argument. A #1 bestseller and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, it is the work of a major writer thinking aloud about what writing is for. Brief but weighty, it lingers well past its final page.