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The Message Audiobook
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Publisher Description
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The renowned author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities.
“Ta-Nehisi Coates always writes with a purpose. . . . These pilgrimages, for him, help ground his powerful writing about race.”—Associated Press
“Coates exhorts readers, including students, parents, educators, and journalists, to challenge conventional narratives that can be used to justify ethnic cleansing or camouflage racist policing. Brilliant and timely.”—Booklist (starred review)
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Vanity Fair, Town & Country, Electric Lit
Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic “Politics and the English Language,” but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.
In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city—a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.
Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
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"The Message charts Coates’s reentry as a public intellectual. . . . The rolling, elegiac cadences of much of his earlier work have yielded to a fury that’s harder edged. But a sense of shock also seems to have elicited in Coates a sense of possibility. . . . He is using his position of prominence and moral authority to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians."
— The New York Times Book Review
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“Author Ta-Nehisi Coates narrates this must-listen, a powerful and thought-provoking collection of essays…Coates frequently addresses listeners in the second person, a technique that creates an intimate connection to his words…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile -
“Bearing witness to oppression…A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“[An] exploration of locations of extreme injustice and of the power of writing to render a more compassionate—and more honest—future.”
— Oprah Daily -
“He grapples with the power and danger of storytelling, the too easy way of shaping and softening reality.”
— Parade -
“Presents a global perspective that challenges the status quo and dares us to envision a more just future.”
— She Reads -
With the game-changing success of his essay/memoir Between the World and Me, anything [Coates] writes will immediately command attention. Here he grapples with the power and danger of storytelling, the too easy way of shaping and softening reality.
— Parade -
Brilliant and timely.
— Booklist, starred review -
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
— Kirkus Reviews, starred review“Searching and restless, The Message is filled with startling revelations that show a writer grappling with how his work fits into history and the present moment. These masterful essays will leave readers convinced that Coates is up to the task. -
This is an incendiary shot fired over the bow of America’s mainstream journalistic establishment.
— Publishers Weekly, starred review -
Ta-Nehisi Coates always writes with a purpose, so naming his latest collection The Message is nothing if not on-brand. But what’s the actual message? Consisting of three pieces of nonfiction, the book is part memoir, part travelogue, and part writing primer. . . . These pilgrimages, for him, help ground his powerful writing about race.
— Associated Press -
The Message marks Coates’s first nonfiction book in nearly a decade, and it arrives at a critical flashpoint in our increasingly globalized society.
— Harper’s Bazaar -
An earnest and intimate exploration of locations of extreme injustice, and of the power of writing to render a more compassionate—and more honest—future . . . At once a rallying cry and a love letter to writing itself, the book is an urgent reminder that ‘politics is the art of the possible, but art creates the possible of politics.’
— Oprah Daily -
Ever since his Baldwin-inflected Between the World and Me, Coates has been known for his incisive (and sometimes uncomfortable) cultural and political commentary. Here he journeys from West Africa to the American South to Palestine to examine how the stories we tell can fail us, and to argue that only the truth can bring justice.
— The Boston Globe -
With his signature incisiveness, Coates interrogates the intersections of race, power, and identity while blending historical insight and personal reflection. Through three essays, Coates presents a global perspective that challenges the status quo and dares us to envision a more just future.
— SheReads
Awards
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A New York Times Bestseller
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A #1 Amazon bestseller
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A Barnes & Noble Bestseller
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A New York Times Bestseller in Audio
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A Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
The Message Listener Reviews
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C S, 1/4/2025
About Ta-Nehisi Coates
Christopher Ryan Grant is an actor and audiobook narrator. His readings include It’s A Long Story: My Life by Willie Nelson and Honky Tonk Samurai by Joe R. Lansdale, among others.