The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates is coming out with a new book this fall (Oct 1, 2024) called The Message and it sounds really interesting:
Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwellโs classic โPolitics and the English Language,โ but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories โ our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking โ expose and distort our realities.
In the first of the bookโs three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own bookโs banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nationโs recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city โ a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the bookโs longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.
Coates was recently a guest on the Longform podcast and he talked about one of the central themes of the book (โhow the stories we tell โ and the ones we donโt โ shape our realitiesโ):
Thereโs a certain sector of politics on the right that really correctly understands that cultural issues are very, very powerful, actually. That books and movies and TV shows and monuments and statues and art, all that stuff actually really does matter and has a huge effect on what we consider actual politics, which is to say voting, legislation, etcetera. Because our whole notions of humanity are derived from these things. Theyโre derived from, you know, stories. Theyโre derived from the news. Theyโre derived from, you know, art. They derive from statues. Thatโs how we decide, you know, who is what.
And the reason, you know itโs powerful is because in previous eras โ for instance, when during the era of redemption, it became extremely important to destroy the multiracial democracies that have been raised in the South. They went after the history. They went after the stories. Thatโs where all those monuments come from. Those monuments are not just raised out of nothing. Itโs not a mistake that it wasnโt until the early 1960s the Southern states started putting up the Confederate battle flag. They understood the power of the symbol. They know. They know. And now they find themselves in an era where there is a very real cultural war, by which I mean: the hegemony that they once enjoyed over the culture is actually actively being challenged, and that is a long term threat to the politics that they represent.
So, I mean, a lot of people say, oh, this is a distraction. I actually think itโs quite intelligent. While itโs not the response I would have, I donโt think itโs a deluded response or delusional response, rather.
It sounds fascinating โ I definitely preordered.
