Review of The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

In light of this, the chapter by Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Message focuses on the position of identity, narratives, and struggle of History against Myth. This slender yet rich book is composed of three essays which span the world, both in the author’s intimate odyssey and in the socio-political landscape. In every part of the book Coates explores such issues as race and belonging, the responsibility of historical memory, nationalist and national narratives and the role of myths.

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Essay 1: This paper shall focus on a personal/mythic journey that will be completed in Dakar, Senegal.

In the first essay, Coates takes the book’s readers for a ride on his maiden trip to Africa, arriving in Dakar, Senegal. Thus, he portrays himself as a traveler in a contemporary urban setting and as a mythic space of archaic importance to the author since it represents the heartland of Lithuania. Dakar ceases to be just geographical entity but transforms into the place located between history and memory, fact and fiction. Hoping into Coates’s hands for the diasporic imagination, he articulates how Black Americans have loved Africa as both a homeland and as a foreign country, a distant dream for so long.

This is important for me as a personal narrative because Coates juxtaposes senegalese reality – that Dakar is a dynamic city – to his highly sentimental attachment to it. The essay showcases his internal conflict: the desire of kinship against the challenge of knowledge that Africa as a continent remains indigenous and extraneous to the African Americans simultaneously. This ‘split,’ the sensation of being ‘in two places at once’ acts as a focus for the essay. She also discusses the perception that Africans and African Americans have towards one another, and it shows that even familial affiliation might make the two groups view each other from different perspectives foundations of cultural difference.

Essay 2: Columbia, South Carolina – Dealing with America’s Myth

In the second essay, the reader is brought back to the United States where Coates describes his experience visiting Columbia in South Carolina – a place deeply investment with Confederate folklore. In this segment, Coates talks about the banning of the book and while his story focuses on his book, there is more to his story than Just censorship of his work, Coates intertwines his story to the hostile culture towards America after the country devoted time recognizing it’s oppressive past especially on slavery and black people. Columbia, Missouri, is deemed appropriate to spotlight as the former state capital and the heart of the Confederate kingdom; it is apt for Coates to use it as a backdrop for the demise of the American myth, the myth, which erases segregationists as such as St. Francois at the same time that it buries the horror of slavery and racism in the darkness of oblivion.

Coates leads his readers through the streets of Columbia where there are statues of Confederate leaders such as Lee and segregationists. He pointed out that the shameful monuments are not only artifacts boringly fixed in place as powerless relics but as practical symbols commuting the narrative of race and power in the nation still. In this essay, Coates wisely uses personal contemplate with the purpose of presenting general observation on mythology and myths in American society, particularly the concept of Lost Cause, which conceals numerous unpleasant facts about American history.

I think that one of the strongest features in this essay is the author’s look at how the Americans try to deal with myths. He notes that as people today acknowledge the sin of their ancestors, there is a tendency to preserve some specific myths about the creation of the state. Coates dares his readers to look past the shiny veneer of these myths and to finally explain why they are relevant to the current racial and political narrative. The remarks that he makes on Columbia public squares extend to speak of how Americans celebrate their history of their nation, which they seem to do by erecting myths than facts.

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Essay 3: Palestine – Nationalism and the Threat of Stories

In the last and largest piece, Coates goes to Palestine to explore nationalism and the stories nations tell themselves into existence. Here, Coates thinks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by comparing American dream of expansion and annexation (Manifest Destiny) to the Zionist dream in Israel. These remarks were based on his observations in Palestine are as follows;

The third essay of The Message is devoted to traveling to Palestine to consider how nationalist narratives work on people and in the world. He makes an explicit connection between the Zionist project in Israel and American exceptionalism both of which elide historical and ongoing violence in the name of settler colonialism. Regarding Coates’ narratives, what stands out most is the overall Gamble—the lives that are lost, destroyed or ruined, and the ongoing cycle of violence and displacement—just as an anthropocentric Gamble is at work in our planetary contemporaneity, with trauma as the common currency and power as the main issue to contest, regardless of the skin color of the contenders.

Coates is at his best and most perceptive and profound as he meditates on his own experience, as well as that of his generation, in this collection of essays, The Message. While Coates travels physically from Dakar to Columbia and Palestine, he is also on a conceptual journey examining how we build our narrative—whether it is national, personal or historical narrative. This book is the powerful, Angry Black Woman continuation of Coates’ work in the fight against racism, a thought-provoking continuation of history and identity; readers are challenged to challenge and accept the stories and than we have forgotten.

Conclusion

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a very thoughtful book, which calls on the reader to perform an act of interpretation on a personal, national and global level. For their part, visiting Africa, America, and Palestine, Coates invites readers to rethink the myths that exist in people’s heads and in the world: those that form people’s identities, histories, and wars. Cooper’s essays are all great but all the essays are different in one way, yet they complement each other to produce a powerful message of the struggle between myths and realities, between individuality and conformity, and the burning human desire for acceptance.

Full integrating Coates theses is quite meaningful specifically in the present context with nationalism, historical erasure, and race relations. Anyone who wants to know how individuals and narratives fit into human histories or wants to understand how the myths that human societies build for themselves determine the kinds of future people can look forward to cannot afford to ignore The Message. Through his sharp analysis and poetic prose, Coates leaves readers with a haunting reminder: The narratives create real effects and by recognizing the tales as real one can fight against them, and start the recovery process.

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