Aamna Mohdin in The Guardian:
Coates’s The Message grapples with the question of whose stories get told, and how that forges our reality. As he writes halfway through: “Politics is the art of the possible, but art creates the possible of politics.” Known for his searing critiques of racial injustice, he came to wider attention with a 2014 essay The Case for Reparations, followed by a 2015 book, Between the World and Me, written as a letter to his son. According to Toni Morrison, he filled “the intellectual void” left by James Baldwin’s death.
The Message starts with a reflection on Coates’s obsession with words. Aged five, he recited Eugene Field’s poem The Duel over and over: “The gingham dog and the calico cat / Side by side on the table sat”. As a young adult, he was captivated by rapper Rakim’s use of alliteration in his 1990 classic Let the Rhythm Hit ’Em: “I’m the arsenal, I got artillery, lyrics are ammo / Rounds of rhythm, then I’mma give ’em piano.”
As a student at Howard University it dawned on him that words, however beautifully arranged, “must serve something” beyond themselves: “They must do the work of illuminating, of confronting and undoing,” he writes. In his view, language – its arsenal, artillery and ammo – must be “joined to politics”. This linguistic responsibility falls particularly on Black writers, and writers of all “conquered peoples”, he says.
More here.
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