# The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates ## Metadata - **Author:** [[Reading/Authors/Ta-Nehisi Coates/Ta-Nehisi Coates|Ta-Nehisi Coates]] - **Published:** October 1, 2024, One World (Random House); about 256 pages - **Form:** Reported essays, part memoir, part travelogue, part guide for writers - **Context:** His first book of nonfiction in about nine years, after *Between the World and Me* (2015) - **Related:** [[Reading/Authors/Mary Karr/The Art of Memoir|The Art of Memoir]] (on first-person truth claims) ## How this note was made I wrote this from reviews and summaries, not from reading the book. Sources differ on small points, such as whether it contains three essays or four (an opening piece on the craft of writing precedes the three journeys), so structure is approximate. The Israel-Palestine section is the most disputed part of the book, so the reception section includes critical voices from more than one side, and says where a source is an advocacy group. The critique is my own synthesis and is marked as such. ## Summary The book is addressed to Coates's writing students at Howard University. It opens with his ideas about writing: the stories people tell, who controls them, and what writers owe readers. Then it follows three trips, each about how a narrative shapes the way people see a place and themselves. 1. **Senegal ("On Pharaohs").** His first visit to Africa, to Dakar and Gorée Island. He thinks about the slave trade and about ancestry and loss, and about rhythm and feeling as a writer's tools. He also takes up the pseudoscientific racism that was used to justify slavery. 2. **South Carolina ("Bearing the Flaming Cross").** A visit prompted by the attempted removal of his earlier book (*Between the World and Me*) from an AP English class in Chapin. He uses the episode to look at Confederate monuments and the myths that sustain them, and at how storytelling can reach readers across racial lines. 3. **Palestine ("The Gigantic Dream").** The longest section, about half the book. On his first trip to Israel and the West Bank he sees checkpoints, segregated roads and displacement, and draws parallels with the Jim Crow world his parents grew up in. He reconsiders his own writing about reparations in light of what he saw. He also says that Palestinians' story must ultimately be told by Palestinians, not by an outsider like him. ## Reception - **Kirkus (positive):** called it a "revelatory meditation on shattering journeys"; thought the Israel-Palestine essay the strongest, with a closing admission that the story "demands new messengers." [Read](https://kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ta-nehisi-coates/the-message-2/print) - **AP, Rob Merrill (largely appreciative):** a slim book mixing memoir, travel and teaching; praised its purpose and observations. [Read](https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/book-review-ta-nehisi-coates-visits-senegal-south-114386715) - **New York Journal of Books (positive):** called the writing "usually riveting"; noted that as an outsider in Senegal and Palestine he is "a witness rather than a protagonist," which loses some of his usual authority without weakening his moral conviction. [Read](https://nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/message) - **Boston Globe, Walton Muyumba (mixed):** credited "important risks" and his honesty, but found the execution incomplete: little engagement with local voices (he meets Senegalese writers only as he leaves, and interviews Palestinians after the visit), and echoes of older "outsider in Africa" writing without engaging Black American writers who have covered similar ground. [Read](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/09/26/arts/ta-nehisi-coates-ponders-inequality-injustice-in-the-message) - **Others, via a summary page:** BookPage ("startling revelations"), Oprah Daily ("earnest and intimate"), Publishers Weekly ("incendiary"), and the New York Times Book Review, which noted a harder-edged fury than in his earlier work. I didn't read these. ([BookBrowse](https://bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4911)) - **Critical voices on the Israel-Palestine section:** - The American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group, objected that the book leaves out Hamas, Iran, the intifadas and earlier peace offers, applies an American racial framework to a different conflict, and relied on a trip organized by biased hosts. [AJC](https://www.ajc.org/news/who-is-ta-nehisi-coates-5-things-to-know-about-his-controversial-new-book-on-israel) - Alan Vanneman, a Substack writer who defends Coates against some attacks, disputes parts of the argument: that the West Bank is the single place resembling his parents' world, and the claim that little has changed for Black Americans. [Substack](https://alanvanneman.substack.com/p/the-message-of-ta-nehisi-coates-the) - Left-leaning outlets (for example [Against the Current](https://againstthecurrent.org/atc234/ta-nehisi-coates-trip-to-palestine-facing-the-zionist-backlash/)) defend the book and describe a "Zionist backlash." I did not read that piece closely. ### The CBS interview On October 9, 2024, CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil interviewed Coates and asked, among other things, about passages he called "extremist" and why a Jewish state offended him. Coates replied that nothing offended him about a Jewish state, only states "built on ethnocracy." CBS News executives later told staff that the interview fell short of editorial standards, mainly in tone. ([The New Arab](https://www.newarab.com/news/cbs-execs-say-ta-nehisi-coates-interview-broke-standards)) That episode drew more attention to the book. ## Critique *This section is my own synthesis from the reviews above, not a review from reading the book.* **What works (consistent across reviewers)** - **A writer's book first.** The framing for students gives the three trips a unity: each is about narrative, who owns it and what it hides. - **Candor about changing his mind.** Muyumba credits him with reconsidering his own 2014 reparations argument after the trip. - **The closing admission.** That Palestinians need to tell their own story is the point several positive reviewers single out as the book's most honest moment. **Reservations** - **Visitor's view.** The sharpest criticism from reviewers who are otherwise respectful (Muyumba, NY Journal of Books) is that a short trip with limited local voices gives him a witness's authority, not a participant's. - **The analogy.** The Jim Crow comparison carries the Palestine section; critics reject it as a poor fit, supporters say it is the insight. Which side you take probably decides how you rate the book. - **Omissions.** Critics say the book leaves out context (Hamas, earlier negotiations). Defenders would say that is a feature of an essay about what he saw, not a history. The book's own framing, a set of lessons for writers, makes both defenses plausible. - **Sourcing the reviews.** Some of the strongest negative and positive pieces come from advocacy organizations, so I weight them as arguments, not as neutral assessments. **Questions to carry while reading** 1. Does the framing for students (writing as an act of narrative control) hold the three essays together, or are they separate pieces? 2. How much does his outsider status matter in each place: Senegal, South Carolina, Palestine? 3. Which of the reviewers' omissions seem like real gaps, and which are outside what the essay set out to do? 4. What does the book say about his own earlier work, *Between the World and Me* in particular, which appears in the South Carolina section? ## Sources [Kirkus](https://kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ta-nehisi-coates/the-message-2/print) · [AP via ABC News](https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/book-review-ta-nehisi-coates-visits-senegal-south-114386715) · [Boston Globe](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/09/26/arts/ta-nehisi-coates-ponders-inequality-injustice-in-the-message) · [NY Journal of Books](https://nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/message) · [BookBrowse](https://bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4911) · [AJC](https://www.ajc.org/news/who-is-ta-nehisi-coates-5-things-to-know-about-his-controversial-new-book-on-israel) · [Alan Vanneman](https://alanvanneman.substack.com/p/the-message-of-ta-nehisi-coates-the) · [The New Arab (CBS interview)](https://www.newarab.com/news/cbs-execs-say-ta-nehisi-coates-interview-broke-standards) ## My notes