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Narrated by:
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Ta-Nehisi Coates
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By:
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Ta-Nehisi Coates
About this listen
#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 listeners 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.
©2024 Ta-Nehisi Coates (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Interview: Ta-Nehisi Coates to writers around the world: We need you
Critic reviews
“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
“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
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Story
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
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We Must Always Remember
- By Cammie on 09-28-19
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Everything and Nothing at Once
- A Black Man's Reimagined Soundtrack for the Future
- By: Joél Leon
- Narrated by: Joél Leon
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in the Bronx, Joél Leon was taught that being soft, being vulnerable, could end your life. Shaped by a singular view of Black masculinity espoused by the media, by family and friends, and by society, he learned instead to care about the gold around his neck and the number of bills in his wallet. He absorbed the “facts” that white was always right and Black men were seen as threatening or great for comic relief but never worthy of the opening credits. It wasn’t until years later that Joél understood he didn’t have to be defined by these things.
By: Joél Leon
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Justice for Marcus Garvey
- Look for Me in the Whirlwind
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates - foreword, Julius Garvey - editor
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was a Black political activist, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, which had a following of more than six million African descended people worldwide. Despite his massive popularity, this Jamaican born international leader was wrongfully sentenced to prison by the U.S. government on trumped-up mail-fraud charges.
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates - foreword, and others
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The 1619 Project
- A New Origin Story
- By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper - editor, and others
- Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Full Cast
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance.
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Comprehensive and Cutting
- By Thomas Ray on 12-30-21
By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others
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The Underground Railroad Records
- Narrating the Hardships, Hairbreadth Escapes, and Death Struggles of Slaves in Their Efforts for Freedom
- By: William Still, Ta-Nehisi Coates - introduction, Quincy T. Mills - editor
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free, JD Jackson, Sullivan Jones, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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As a conductor for the Underground Railroad - the covert resistance network created to aid and protect slaves seeking freedom - William Still helped as many as 800 people escape enslavement. He also meticulously collected the letters, biographical sketches, arrival memos, and ransom notes of the escapees. The Underground Railroad Records is an archive of primary documents that trace the narrative arc of the greatest, most successful campaign of civil disobedience in American history.
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This Book is Abridged by Two Thirds!
- By Chris on 06-24-20
By: William Still, and others
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Black AF History
- The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
- By: Michael Harriot
- Narrated by: Michael Harriot
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie. In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history.
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LOVE It!
- By KMB on 09-29-23
By: Michael Harriot
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The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
- A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917--2017
- By: Rashid Khalidi
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi, Rashid Khalidi - introduction
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members - mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.
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Thoroughly Researched and Evidence-Based, but...
- By K on 05-24-21
By: Rashid Khalidi
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The 400-Year Holocaust
- White America’s Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide - and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory
- By: Dante D. King
- Narrated by: Dante D. King
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The 400-Year Holocaust: White America’s Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide—and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory examines and discusses factions of the legal history of anti-Blackness and Whiteness through colonialism and the United States, and its impacts on present-day America
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1619 project (great)! 400 Years ( surgically dissect laws aren’t real to perpetuate the big lie as we still seen this moment.
- By chris jones on 08-03-24
By: Dante D. King
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The Fire Next Time
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Jesse L. Martin
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.
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Sad and moving and powerful and beautiful
- By Darwin8u on 09-17-15
By: James Baldwin
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Message to the People
- By: Marcus Garvey
- Narrated by: Darnel Stone
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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This fascinating distillation of a great leader's experience is published here.
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Empowering
- By 592_mansa on 10-10-24
By: Marcus Garvey
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White Fear
- How the Browning of America Is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds
- By: Roland S. Martin
- Narrated by: Roland S. Martin
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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For two centuries, the deep-seated fear that many White people feel—of losing power, of losing economic standing, of losing a particular “way of life”—has been the driving force behind American politics and culture. And as we approach a future where White people will become a racial minority in the US, something estimated to occur as early as 2043, that fear is only intensifying, festering, and becoming more visible. Are we destined for a violent clash? What can we do to step into our country’s inevitable future, without tearing ourselves apart in the process?
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an interesting and informative lesson
- By Mo Shaabazz on 09-14-22
By: Roland S. Martin
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Erasing History
- By: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Combining historical research with an in-depth analysis of our modern political landscape, Erasing History issues a dire warning for America and the world: the worst fascist movements of humanity’s past began in schools; the same place so many of today’s right-wing political parties have trained their most vicious attacks. Yale professor Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the right’s tactics and traces their inspirations and funding back to some of the most dangerous ideas of human history.
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The bias attitude of the author
- By Elizabeth ohanna on 09-30-24
By: Jason Stanley
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We Were Eight Years in Power
- Eine amerikanische Tragödie
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Olaf Pessler
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Mit Barack Obama sollte die amerikanische Gesellschaft ihren jahrhundertealten Rassismus überwinden. Am Ende seiner Amtszeit zerschlugen sich die Reste dieser Hoffnung mit der Machtübernahme Donald Trumps, den Ta-Nehisi Coates als "Amerikas ersten weißen Präsidenten" bezeichnet: ein Mann, dessen politische Existenz in der Abgrenzung zu Obama besteht. Coates zeichnet ein bestechend kluges und leidenschaftliches Porträt der Obama-Ära und ihres Vermächtnisses.
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
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We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For
- By: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Narrated by: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the nation's preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how we have the power to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires.
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We Are The Leaders We Have Been Waiting For
- By Robin Raine on 09-03-24
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The Grift
- The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump
- By: Clay Cane
- Narrated by: Clay Cane
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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After the Civil War, the pillars of Black Republicanism were a balanced critique of both political parties, civil rights for all Americans, reinventing an economy based on exploitation, and, most importantly, building thriving Black communities. How did Black Republicanism devolve from revolutionaries like Frederick Douglass to the puppets in the Trump era?
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the detailed accounting of White hatred and racism and how they used black "Grifters" to aided them maintain total control.
- By joseph carroll on 01-31-24
By: Clay Cane
A Necessary Read
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The most powerful thing you'll read this year.
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Spot on!
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such an important read
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I’m not one for flowery prose, but in this particular book, it felt very fitting and added to beauty of the journey Coates describes.
Beautifully written
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Mind blown
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Learned so much history
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Extraordinary
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The images, emotions, connections woven into an experience that will "haunt me"
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Slingshot of truth
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