Book Review: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I’m pretty tired this week, so I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts about The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Once again, I want to say “This book is just really good, you should read it!” but I made a commitment to actually review things, so I need to try to make a coherent argument for why this book is good. At the same time, the book is already a bestseller, and Coates is an established author with a great reputation, so what am I going to tell you that you don’t already know?

Oddly, this was actually my first Ta-Nehisi Coates book! He’s been on my radar these past few years, but somehow his books never ended up on my bookshelves or library hold lists. That all changed recently when a friend recommended The Message and my brother recommended The Water Dancer (still waiting for that hold to come in!). I love an author who has range and I’ll be interested to see how his fiction compares to his non-fiction.

The Message is addressed to an unnamed “you”, a student Coates met at a writing retreat. This is why the author-narrator-audience-reader chapter of Why We Read kept coming to mind. The audience that Coates addresses is clearly not me — I believe that audience is a youngish black person, a college student or other attendee at the writing event. I’m a white person almost as old as Coates. These moments of disconnect from the intended audience and the actual audience gave me food for thought, as I considered how my own experiences differed from those shared by narrator and audience, and when my experiences were more similar to the narrator’s than the audience’s (ie when they were related to age, not race).

This book consists of three essay-style chapters (and an introduction), each about a place that Coates visited, and how his experiences in those places tie into storytelling: the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we tell the rest of the world, the stories we allow ourselves to believe, and the stories we try to stop others from telling.

The first is about Senegal, and about the Black American conception of Africa, and about the concept of kingdoms, and about how the stories we tell to empower ourselves can also prop up problematic concepts (ie, monarchies). Coates does a really good job of describing Senegal as viewed through his eyes, and I also related to some of his discussion about walking around alone — I often travel alone and can get way too deep into my own thoughts rather than trying to connect to others.

The second is about visiting South Carolina to attend a school board meeting which was discussing banning one of his books. I found this chapter especially interesting because it reminded me so much of what I had just read in That Librarian. Whether book banners are attacking a book for teaching “critical race theory” or for sexual content, they use very similar tactics.

The third and by far the longest (almost three hours at 1x speed on audio) is about Palestine, and this was the hardest chapter for me to listen to, because Coates went there before the October 8 attack that kicked off the most recent round of genocide, and even then, when people weren’t actively being bombed, conditions were horrible. Knowing what was still to come in the recent future after his visit creates an extra level of horror. In this chapter, Coates balances the horror of the Holocaust and his own beliefs about Israel against the way Palestinians have been treated.

Over all, I found this book really thought provoking, although the final chapter left me feeling so heavy. I can definitely recommend the audiobook, as it is read by Coates and he makes an excellent narrator.

CWs and TWs: This book contains discussion of slavery, racism, and genocide. It includes derogatory uses of the n-word in quotes and discussions of a historic figure referring to himself as an “n-word -ologist.”

Source and Format: I borrowed the audiobook from Pierce County Library System.

Reading Challenge Prompts

Nook & Cranny (Card 1): BIPOC Voices & Anti-Racism. Because this book is narrated towards a specific Black audience, it doesn’t spend any time explaining racism or trying to convince the reader that racism still exists and is still a big problem. It proceeds with the idea that you already know all of that, and so it discusses racism, but from a place of a shared understanding of the experience of being Black in America. It was an interesting experience reading a book that wasn’t going to hold my hand and walk me through it, and I appreciated that.

World of Whimm: Would Recommend. Absolutely would recommend this to anyone looking for some insightful thoughts about writing, storytelling, and re-examining the stories we’ve internalized.

Reading Challenge Progress

Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 2 of 25, no bingos.

Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 2 of 25, no bingos.

Book Riot: 1 of 25.

Physical TBR: 0 of 12.

Brick & Mortar: 7 of 25, 0 bingos*.
*I’ve already completed several of the non-reading prompts, hence the mismatch with the number of reviews!

World of Whimm: 1 out of 24 (yes, I added another card to the list, I can’t stop!).