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https://theconversation.com/ta-nehisi-coates-describes-what-he-saw-in-palestine-as-apartheid-resembling-americas-segregated-jim-crow-south-241021>
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Review: The Message – Ta-Nehisi Coates (Hamish Hamilton)
In May 2023, renowned Black American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates spent ten days in
the West Bank and Israel, where he spent half his time with Breaking the
Silence, a group of former Israeli soldiers who now oppose the occupation.
Going to Palestine was “a huge shock to me”, he told the
New York Times.
Coming back, he felt, as he told US journalist Peter Beinart, “a responsibility
to yell” about what he’d seen – which he describes as apartheid and compares to
the segregated Jim Crow South in the United States.
As he was writing his new book,
The Message, the October 7 Hamas attacks
happened, followed by the ongoing war in Gaza. He doesn’t cover these events in
the book, though he has talked about them in interviews, including one in which
he described the decision not to allow a Palestinian state legislator to speak
at the Democratic National Convention that nominated Kamala Harris as “deeply
inhumane”.
Coates is among the most celebrated and accomplished writers in the US. He is
also, importantly, a Black writer in a world still dominated by white
Americans. He first grabbed attention with a 2014 essay on America and slavery
in
The Atlantic, titled “The Case for Reparation”. Subsequently, he has
written five books, including a novel,
The Water Dancer, set on a Virginia
slave plantation. He was even hired to write a
Superman movie.
Coates has deliberately cast himself as part of the legacy of Black American
writing, most notably through lyrical language that echoes the writer and civil
rights activist James Baldwin. After reading his memoir about the experience of
being Black in America,
Between The World and Me, fellow writer Toni Morrison
said she regarded him as Baldwin’s heir."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
