BookBrowse Reviews The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Decorated author and journalist Coates brings readers on a journey of self-discovery to Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine for a nuanced meditation on the stories we tell ourselves about history.

It does not surprise me that Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Message is one of the most important books I've read this year. What does surprise me is that I can already feel how it has fundamentally shifted something in me as a writer, scholar, and person — and now I am inspired to go out into the world exactly as Coates implores his audience to do at the end: with a hunger for learning about unsung perspectives.

Initially intended to be an open-hearted letter to young writers, The Message is about the stories all of us tell — or don't. How do these stories shape or distort our perception of the past, present, and future? How is language one of the most formidable weapons we have in those stories, and how do we wield it? This is an incredible responsibility that Coates insists is a writer's to bear. In fact, it goes a step further: young writers should be tasked with saving the world.

Coates begins by bringing readers alongside him to Senegal, on his first trip to Africa. Then, he reports to South Carolina, in response to the attempted banning of one of his books. Lastly, he travels throughout the Middle East to witness firsthand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (prior to 2023).

I think it is important to establish what this book is and what it isn't. In addition to what I've previously mentioned, this book is a perspective on supremacy in many forms through the lens of a Black man who grew up in America. It is also a series of meditations by someone with incredible accolades — a well-respected, academic historian who is earnest in his reporting and has no interest in being contrarian. Instead, he is interested in challenging systems one may be inclined to just accept without nuance or care, and he does so in a boldly vulnerable manner. The book isn't solely about the Israel-Palestine conflict. During a segment on CBS Morning, he makes this clear by saying, "I wrote a 260 page book. It is not a treatise on the entirety of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis." I believe that anyone who reads this book in as open-minded a way as he wrote it will immediately understand this. Unfortunately, he has to say it over and over again for those who have missed it. Coates has invited you, reader, to the table, if you want what he's serving.

I have always preferred to read narrative nonfiction that feels like a series of meditations. I find the most joy in following writers through their thought processes, in their most unfiltered, human moments. This book is an intimate conversation with someone who is very humble, measured, and introspective. I am also a writer, so I felt especially invested. I reexamined myself as both a person and artist while reading this book, which I think is one of the main goals of The Message. To be a great writer, you need to excel at understanding the world around you, which includes, most importantly, knowing when you don't know. Once you know that you don't know, it's just as important to think about how you try to know.

Like many, I was most compelled by Coates' experience in the Middle East, which of course is intentional: this is the largest section of the book, and the most controversial.

I do not seek to strip Coates of his accolades (as some outlets are dying to do) when saying what I will say next. Instead I seek to connect to Coates' perspective as a reader who shares intimately experienced qualities with him. Coates is a Black man who grew up in America. He has mentioned witnessing and feeling the effects of Jim Crow. As a Black woman in the American South, it was second nature for me, as I learned about the tension between Israel and Palestine, to ascribe my Western framework of oppression to the subject. I think Coates has a similar humanitarian lens in that respect, which also means we had many of the same shortcomings when trying to translate the conflict into our worldview.

Readers see this when Coates frequently juxtaposes de facto segregation in America and South Africa to what is happening in Israel and occupied Palestine. Throughout this section, he also correlates what it means to be Black in America to being Muslim in Israel: "For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man," he writes, "Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere."

In the same breath, Coates explicitly says the comparison does not always function in a way he can properly translate. He mentions how Americans are often unaware of the oppression Palestinians face because they are virtually voiceless when it comes to our news outlets — something I as an American didn't pay attention to prior to 2023. He suggests that Jewish perspectives are usually the only ones regarded in tense conversations about the region, and notes, "[T]he Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem…[is] built directly on top of a Muslim graveyard." How does one make a value judgment when "victims and victimizers [are] overflowing" — when the perpetrators of persecution have a long history of being persecuted themselves? It can be too complex to wrap language around what he has witnessed and what he knows. I do not see that as a negative at all for The Message. I think this is the ultimate form of vulnerability in his reporting. In fact, it felt very comforting to read about Coates' discomfort. He writes, upon visiting a Palestinian family with an incredible story:

"All the details of the visit mattered to me, because I no longer trusted the picture conjured by the word 'Palestinian' as projected from America's most trusted news sources. It is painful to admit to that, because I'm part of it, because I believed in it, and because I think the questioning, for me, has only just begun."

Here I understood that Coates and I, despite having both lived in a country that contradicts our knowledge of our oppression, were somehow also victims of our own biases. I think neither of us will ever truly comprehend the full scale of the conflict. We will always have incomplete stories. And this will always be the most frustrating aspect of oppression and resistance: how we define these two will shift depending on what version of history we understand, interpret, and believe in.

One of the most important subtleties of Coates' message provides great insight into how he tries to move through the world humbly and earnestly. He shares with readers an account of visiting a Middle Eastern restaurant in Chicagoland for a gathering of friends, Palestinian activists, teachers, and lawyers:

"I felt something that I have always enjoyed about reporting, about seeing worlds beyond my own — I feel myself disappear. When no one is holding my hand or guiding me, and I am watching people living out their particular customs, engaged in their small conversations, I can feel myself dissolving in it all."

Here, Coates makes it known that to be a true witness, there are two key components. You need to know the limits of your own authority. You also need to know how to become comfortable with being invisible. In other words, you need to know when to listen, just as much as you need to know when to speak.

If you take one thing away from this book, it can't just be whether you agree or disagree with Coates. What you take away from it has to be the power of your voice. All the minutiae of your narrative: your delivery, patience, diction, and your comprehension of it all, is a reflection of how you move through and interpret the world. How you wield and share that gift does change the world, whether you realize it or not.

This review first ran in the November 6, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.