The Message
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
One World
ISBN: 978-0593230381
256pp.

Readers often classify books according to the effect that the writing has on them. Some books are your comfort reads; they take you into a world of simplicity and familiarity. Then there are those that rip through whatever preconceived notion of reality you hold dear. Such books create chaos and unrest, followed by a tornado of ideas birthing, ideals shattering, giving way to something new. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book The Message, intended for his students, is a call to arms for anyone who believes in the power of stories and the written word.

The Message is a book that advocates action. Coates begins by reminding us of the significance of language and the duties that fall upon the shoulders of a writer. There is purpose behind every story, a certain framing that goes into propelling the narrative forward. Writers are, in part, ‘map-makers’; in order to connect to their reader, they must demonstrate clarity of purpose and direction.

What follows is freedom from “biased curation” of powerful influences, always preying, waiting to dismantle any narrative that may try to threaten their definition of the status quo. This sets the stage for what is to come: a no-holds-barred introspection into ideals held dear and a future where these are challenged.

Coates travels to Senegal, where he encounters the “syllabus of white supremacy”, the work of men who were not only anthropologists but also slaveholders, who “profited from the trade and labour of the people [they] enslaved and then profited again by [their] chosen field of study.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book, spanning Senegal, the United States and Palestine, is a call to arms for anyone who believes in the power of stories and written language

Like a surgeon about to perform a complex procedure, Coates uses his scalpel with clinical accuracy as he describes the insecurity of people who attain power through violent means but seek to justify that violence by any means necessary. His scalpel slices through the skin and fat that rests below till he reaches the diseased organ and explores the root cause of the infection: a weaponised history, one........

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