About this item
The #1 New York Times bestselling 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 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.
About the Author
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Between the World and Me, a finalist for the National Book Award. A MacArthur "Genius Grant" fellow, Coates has received the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, and the George Polk Award for his Atlantic cover story "The Case for Reparations." He lives in New York with his wife and son.
