Litsy

The Message | Ta-Nehisi Coates

pick

Definitely falls in the category of 'the kind of writing I'm hoping is being read and discussed in classrooms'.
The book is divided into four essays, with a heavy focus on the purpose of writing. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? Journalism is Not a Luxury - The importance and power of words relaying the truth of experience, interviewing people to get the actual facts from sources, confront the 'known' popular idea/perspective. 22h

Robotswithpersonality 3/? On Pharaohs - Finding proof of resilience, community, addressing internalized racism, colourism, created by the intentional agenda of white supremacy justifying slavery.
22h

Robotswithpersonality 4/? Bearing the Flaming Cross - My favourite ❤️ - Learning and writing with ADHD; context and the meaning and purpose of learning certain knowledge; safe space so students can be challenged, less available to black studens and those who are not served by traditional classroom structure; the backlash against 'critical race theory'; censorship/book banning; objection against teaching conformity, art influencing politics. 22h

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Robotswithpersonality 5/? The Gigantic Dream -Journalistic responsibility, colonialism, racism and the Jim Crow era, how aspects of these experiences show up in the current Palestinian experience, but fall short of identifying the full sense of what Palestinians are struggling to survive. Coates is addressing his own lenses of experience, acknowledging analogies perhaps not as useful or appropriate as he'd hoped in an article he'd previously written called “The (edited) 22h

Robotswithpersonality 6/? It continues to be encouraging every time a journalist focuses on the injustices inflicted upon Palestine, when they're willing to push through the thorny topic of historical and modern antisemitism to specifically address what is going in Israel now. However, this essay in particular, which takes up about half the book, suffers in comparison to Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. 22h

Robotswithpersonality 7/7 Akkad's writing is consistently an urgent gut punch, while Coates seems to regularly get bogged down in self-recrimination for not fully understanding the issue, and considering historical lenses, even if both of those aspects have weight in considering how journalists can write better on such critical matters.

⚠️racism, antisemitism 22h

Cuilin Fantastic detailed review. 13h

13 likes7 comments

Robotswithpersonality

The Message | Ta-Nehisi Coates

...to be truly seen...

Cuilin Always through stories!! 13h

12 likes1 comment

Robotswithpersonality

The Message | Ta-Nehisi Coates

Save the books that discomfit, save the teachers that defend them, save the future.

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Robotswithpersonality

The Message | Ta-Nehisi Coates

“...add virtue to [ ] violence.“
An eloquent takedown of an ugly business.

11 likes

Robotswithpersonality

The Message | Ta-Nehisi Coates

Imagination is a gateway to policy change, writing is an inspiration for that imagination.

11 likes

Robotswithpersonality

The Message | Ta-Nehisi Coates

“It is not enough for me to convince the reader of my argument; I want them to feel that same private joy that I feel alone.“

Today's 'scratched my brain just right' sentence.

9 likes

Robotswithpersonality

The Message | Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The danger we present, as writers, is not that we will simply convince their children of a different dogma but that we will convince them that they have the power to form their own.“

8 likes

Robotswithpersonality

The Message | Ta-Nehisi Coates

The need (which so many are privileged to never have to think of) to know you are in a safe enough space to challenge and be challenged by literature, in being taught.

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Robotswithpersonality

The Message | Ta-Nehisi Coates