Worth a Read YES
Length 400
Quick Review Eight pieces previously written by Ta-Nehisi Coates are combined with observations and opinions he has looking back while We Were Eight Years in Power.
I am ashamed to say I had not read a Ta-Nehisi Coates book until We Were Eight Years in Power. From the very first page, I was hooked. The majority of Coates’ writing has focused on race in the U.S, and he has become known as a “black writer” for better or worse. Over the course of Obama’s presidency, Coates wrote a great deal. Looking back over that time, he chose eight pieces to document those eight years. Before each, he included addendums, thoughts, opinions, hopes, and more.
From the very first page, I was a little in love with Coates’ style. There is some tongue-in-cheek phrasing throughout We Were Eight Years in Power to subversively emphasize the all too present hypocrisy, blindness, and iniquity within American society. I love reading simultaneously intelligent and accessible works. Coates is like your favorite professor who is really smart but also swears a little. He has a truly remarkable knowledge base spanning classics, science, pop culture references – I absolutely looked up 96.92% of the latter – and everything in between. Reading this was overwhelmingly stimulating in the best kind of way.
One of the most fascinating pieces was “The Case For Reparations.” It was amazing and chilling. Coates brings a light to the haunting realities black Americans live with on a daily basis. Americans (read that as white Americans) need to read it. We cannot be a country divided. To survive, we need to face history. Ruins are not just in Rome, they are all around us. We live in the ruins we created centuries ago. Chicago comes up a great deal throughout We Were Eight Years in Power for good reason. It is a prime example of what we have yet to overcome, “Today Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country, a fact that reflects assiduous planning.” If we refuse to even acknowledge the reality of Chicago, how can we possibly move forward?
Obama was the first black president. The progress was followed by a giant side step/fall/catastrophe. Trump won the presidency. (Sadly.) Coates is a realist, but there is an optimist underneath. Like many others, Coates did not believe it was possible for Trump to win, but win he did. Coates was wrong. (Sadly.) The optimist helped him believe in America, even though his career has focused on the stubborn and insidious white supremacy rooted in American tradition, society, and legal institutions. Hope helped so many believe Trump was impossible. Fear made it possible.
I love We Were Eight Years in Power. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a master of words and insight. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. His pen is not a sword. It’s a scalpel cutting precisely to dissect society and humanity to see the reality our country faces. As I was reading Coates’ words, I wondered if he ever reads his writing and thinks ‘damn, I am a magician with words.’
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*By the way, I decided to take the pictures for this book in front of slaves’ quarters at Oak Alley Plantation. Our history and current success is due to the thousands and thousands of people who were never considered people at all. They were stolen from their homes, owned, beaten, raped, murdered, and more. America needs to start recognizing history as it happened not how it has been taught or recorded for generations.
Memorable Quotes
“All my life I had watched women support the dreams of men, hand over their own dreams to men, only to wonder, in later years, whether it was all worth it.”
“America had a biography, and in that biography, the shackling of black people – slaves and free – featured prominently.”
“White people are, in some profound way, trapped; it took generations to make them white, and it will take more to unmake them.”
“I would like to believe in God. I simply can’t.”
“The essence of American racism is disrespect.”
Title: We Were Eight Years in Power; An American Tragedy
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Publisher: One World (Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780399590573
