Ta-Nehisi Coates – författare

In the 150 years since the end of the Civil War and the ratificiation of the Thirteenth Amendment, the story of race and America has remained a brutally simple one, written on flesh: it is the story of the black body, exploited to create the country's foundational wealth, violently segregated to unite a nation after a civil war, and, today, still disproportionately threatened, locked up and killed in the streets. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can America reckon with its fraught racial history? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates' attempt to answer those questions, presented in the form of a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son - and readers - the story of his own awakening to the truth about history and race through a series of revelatory experiences: immersion in nationalist mythology as a child; engagement with history, poetry and love at Howard University; travels to Civil War battlefields and the South Side of Chicago; a journey to France that reorients his sense of the world; and pilgrimages to the homes of mothers whose children's lives have been taken as American plunder. Taken together, these stories map a winding path towards a kind of liberation - a journey from fear and confusion, to a full and honest understanding of the world as it is. Masterfully woven from lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me offers a powerful new framework for understanding America's history and current crisis, and a transcendent vision for a way forward.

#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)

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.

*An extraordinary coming-of-age story, adapted from the adult memoir by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Water Dancer and Between the World and Me*''Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip-hop generation'' Walter MosleyThis was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to re-emerge on corners and prison tiersTa-Nehisi Coates grew up in the tumultuous 1980''s in Baltimore known, back then as the murder capital of the United States.With seven siblings, four mothers, and one highly unconventional father: Paul Coates, a larger-than-life Vietnam Vet, Black Panther, Ta-Nehisi''s coming of age story is gripping and lays bare the troubled, often violent life of the inner-city, and the author''s experience as a young black person in itWith candor, Ta-Nehisi Coates details the challenges on the streets and within one''s family, especially the eternal struggle for peace between a father and son and the important role family plays in such circumstances.

Brought to you by Penguin. An extraordinary coming-of-age story, adapted from the adult memoir by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Water Dancer and Between the World and MeThis was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to re-emerge on corners and prison tiersTa-Nehisi Coates grew up in the tumultuous 1980''s in Baltimore known, back then as the murder capital of the United States.With seven siblings, four mothers, and one highly unconventional father: Paul Coates, a larger-than-life Vietnam Vet, Black Panther, Ta-Nehisi''s coming of age story is gripping and lays bare the troubled, often violent life of the inner-city, and the author''s experience as a young black person in itWith candor, Ta-Nehisi Coates details the challenges on the streets and within one''s family, especially the eternal struggle for peace between a father and son and the important role family plays in such circumstances.''Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip-hop generation'' Walter Mosley© Ta-Nehisi Coates 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates, read by Beresford Bennett.From 2008-2016, the leader of the free world was a black man. Obama''s presidency reshaped America and transformed the international conversation around politics, race, equality. But it attracted criticism and bred discontent as much as it inspired hope - so much so, that the world now faces an uncertain future under a very different kind of US President.In this essential new book, peerless journalist and thinker Ta-Nehisi Coates takes stock of the Obama era, speaking authoritatively from political, ideological and cultural perspectives, and drawing a sophisticated and penetrating portrait of America today.

THE NEW YORK TIMES #1 BESTSELLER OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK''One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I haven''t felt this way since I first read Beloved . . .'' Oprah Winfrey Lose yourself in the stunning debut novel everyone is talking about - the unmissable historical story of injustice and redemption that resonates powerfully todayHiram Walker is a man with a secret, and a war to win. A war for the right to life, to family, to freedom.Born into bondage on a Virginia plantation, he is also born gifted with a mysterious power that he won''t discover until he is almost a man, when he risks everything for a chance to escape. One fateful decision will carry him away from his makeshift plantation family and into the heart of the underground war on slavery... ''A transcendent work from a crucial political and literary artist'' Diana Evans ''I''ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates'' Toni Morrison

In his boldly imagined first novel, Ta-Nehisi Coates, the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me, brings home the most intimate evil of enslavement: the cleaving and separation of families. 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 deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram's resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures. This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children-the violent and capricious separation of families-and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today's most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.

Brought to you by Penguin.With his bestseller, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates established himself as a unique voice in his generation of American authors; a brilliant writer and thinker in the tradition of James Baldwin.In his keenly anticipated new book, The Message, he explores the urgent question of how our stories – our reporting, imaginative narratives and mythmaking – both expose and distort our realities. Travelling to three resonant sites of conflict, he illuminates how the stories we tell – as well as the ones we don’t – work to shape us.The first of the book’s three main parts finds Coates on his inaugural trip to Africa – a journey to Dakar, where he finds himself in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and the ghost-haunted country of his imagination. He then takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on the banning of his own work and the deep roots of a false and fiercely protected American mythology – visibly on display in this capital of the confederacy, with statues of segregationists still looming over its public squares. Finally in Palestine, Coates sees with devastating clarity the tragedy that grows in the clash between the stories we tell and reality 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.© Ta-Nehisi Coates 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025