Olivia: Most of us think of writing as a creative escape, maybe a way to tell a nice story. But our author today argues that's a dangerous luxury. For him, writing is a weapon, and every sentence is a battle in a war for truth. Jackson: A weapon? That sounds incredibly intense. I thought we were talking about essays and memoirs, not warfare. What are you getting at? Olivia: I'm getting at the core of the new, highly-anticipated book from Ta-Nehisi Coates, called The Message. And you're right, it is intense. Coates, who's a MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient and National Book Award winner, is essentially asking: in a world full of injustice, what is the point of writing? Jackson: That’s a huge question. I know his book Between the World and Me was a cultural phenomenon. How does this one build on that? Olivia: It’s been called its spiritual successor, but with a passport. He takes his examination of race and power global. And he starts by looking at another legendary writer, George Orwell, who felt that the turbulent times he lived in gave him no choice but to write politically. Jackson: Okay, I can see that for an investigative journalist or a political commentator. But for a writer in general? I'm still a little skeptical. Olivia: Well, hold onto that skepticism. Because Coates argues that for some people, the political isn't a choice. He says that for his students at Howard University, and for himself, there is "no real distance between writing and politics." When your very humanity is up for debate, every word you write is an act of defiance.

Jackson: "No real distance between writing and politics." That's a bold statement. It almost sounds like he's saying there’s no such thing as art for art's sake. Olivia: He essentially is. For communities that have been systematically dehumanized, he argues that writing has to serve a larger purpose: emancipation. It’s not just about convincing people with facts; it’s about making them feel the truth in their bones. He says his goal is to "haunt" the reader. Jackson: Haunt the reader. I like that. It’s so much more visceral than just ‘persuade’. Can you give me an example of a story that haunted him? What shaped this view? Olivia: Absolutely. He tells this incredibly vivid story from when he was seven years old, in 1983. He got a copy of Sports Illustrated with his hero, running back Tony Dorsett, on the cover. He was ecstatic. But deep inside the magazine, there was another story that completely overshadowed it. Jackson: What was it about? Olivia: It was about a New England Patriots wide receiver named Darryl Stingley. A few years earlier, in 1978, Stingley ran a slant route and took a brutal hit from the Raiders' defensive back, Jack Tatum. The article described how Stingley woke up in the hospital, completely paralyzed from the neck down. Jackson: Oh, man. At seven years old? That's devastating. Olivia: Exactly. Coates writes about how the story just took him over. He felt like he was experiencing the trauma. He became obsessed, even tracking down Jack Tatum's memoir, which was chillingly titled, They Call Me Assassin. Jackson: Wow. So this one story, this piece of journalism, didn't just inform him. It fundamentally changed his understanding of the world. It showed him that evil could win, that violence could be senseless and final. Olivia: Precisely. It wasn't an abstract lesson. It was a haunting. That experience taught him the power of testimony and personal narrative. It's not about listing facts; it's about making the abstract tangible. It’s making the reader see a man who can no longer move, and understanding that this is a result of a system, a culture of violence. Jackson: Okay, I'm starting to get it. The haunting isn't just a spooky metaphor; it's about embedding a truth so deep in someone's consciousness that they can't shake it. But does he think this only applies to journalism? What about other forms of writing? Olivia: That’s the fascinating part. He connects this power to everything. He talks about reading Macbeth in high school in Baltimore and hearing the words of a murderer who felt beaten down by the "vile blows and buffets of the world." Suddenly, Shakespeare wasn't some dusty old playwright; he was describing the very feeling of the streets in his city. Jackson: So the language of a 400-year-old play reached across time and space and spoke directly to his experience in Baltimore. Olivia: Yes! And he saw the same magic, the same power to organize words and sound into a haunting story, in the lyrics of the rapper Rakim. For Coates, the tool is the same whether you're Shakespeare, a journalist, or a hip-hop artist. The goal is to use language to illuminate a truth so clearly that it becomes a part of the person who receives it.

Jackson: That makes sense. The writer's job is to illuminate, to make people see. But it's one thing to talk about that in a classroom or by analyzing a play. It's another thing to do it in the real world, especially in a place where the "truth" is so fiercely contested. Where does he take us to show this in action? Olivia: He takes us to the place that he says is the heart of the book and the heart of his own intellectual and moral reckoning: his 2023 trip to Israel and Palestine. And this is where the book becomes deeply personal and, for many readers, very controversial. Jackson: I can imagine. The discourse around that conflict is a minefield. What was his experience? Olivia: He describes it as a place where his theories about race and power were put to the test. He tells a story about visiting the Al-Aqsa complex in Jerusalem with a group of writers. They get stopped at the Lion's Gate by young Israeli soldiers. For 45 minutes, they're just held there, passports examined, with no explanation. Jackson: And what did he observe while they were waiting? Olivia: He saw white tourists walking through without a problem. But he saw no one who was visibly Muslim being allowed to enter. In that moment, he has this profound realization. He writes, "Race is a species of power and nothing else." It didn't matter that he was an American, a famous author. In that context, his body was subject to the power of those soldiers. Jackson: That's a chilling thought—that race isn't about biology or culture, but purely about who has the power to control your movement, your time, your life. Did he see other examples of this? Olivia: It gets even more stark when he visits the city of Hebron. He describes it as traveling back in time to a place where "no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person." He sees Palestinian schoolchildren being turned back at a checkpoint. He himself is stopped and asked his religion. He sees streets that Palestinians are forbidden to walk on. Jackson: Wait, he's drawing a direct line to the Jim Crow South in America. That's a huge, provocative claim. Olivia: It is. And he knows it. That's why this section of the book has been so polarizing. He's taking one of the most sensitive topics in the world and applying the same lens he uses to analyze American racism. He's saying, look at the mechanics of the power structure. Jackson: Okay, but the obvious and critical question is, how does he square this with the immense, undeniable tragedy of Jewish history? The Holocaust is a singular horror. Critics must argue that you can't just ignore that context. Olivia: He doesn't ignore it. In fact, he confronts it head-on. He describes a visit to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, and being completely overwhelmed by the scale of the atrocity. He says every time he visits a space like that, he comes away thinking, "it was worse than I thought, worse than I could ever imagine." Jackson: So he acknowledges that horror. Olivia: Deeply. But then he introduces this idea of America's "selective memory." He argues that the memory of the Holocaust is sometimes used to create a narrative of redemption—the creation of Israel as a light out of darkness—that conveniently ignores the story of what happened to the people who were already there. He refuses to let one tragedy be used to erase another. He quotes the Palestinian scholar Noura Erakat: "We have all been lied to about too much."

Jackson: Wow. So he's not just critiquing a government or a policy. He's critiquing the very stories we tell ourselves to make sense of history. Olivia: Exactly. And this is where the book reaches its most profound and self-reflective point. The journey to Palestine forces him to turn that critical lens back on himself, and on his own most celebrated work. Jackson: What do you mean? Olivia: He reflects on his landmark essay, "The Case for Reparations." In that piece, he used Germany's reparations to Israel after the Holocaust as a prime example, a proof of concept that a nation could atone for its historical crimes. It was a powerful part of his argument. Jackson: I remember that. It was a brilliant rhetorical move. Olivia: But after his trip, he sees it differently. He writes that he was "seeking a world beyond plunder, but using a proof of concept that was itself born of plunder." He realizes that the redemption story he was using—Israel's creation—was built on the displacement of Palestinians, on the event they call the Nakba, or the catastrophe. Jackson: Hold on. Are you saying he's essentially retracting or at least deeply complicating the argument in his most famous work? That takes an incredible amount of intellectual courage and honesty. Olivia: That’s the message of The Message. It’s not about having all the right answers. It’s about the relentless, painful, and necessary process of questioning your own myths, even the ones you created in the service of a just cause. It’s about the willingness to see a more complex and uncomfortable truth. Jackson: It all comes back to that idea of haunting. The story of Palestine haunted him so much it forced him to re-examine his own story. Olivia: It did. And he closes the book with a powerful quote from the poet Audre Lorde, which feels like the ultimate thesis: "You cannot act upon what you cannot see." His job, as he defines it, is to make us see. To clear away the myths and the comfortable lies so we can see the world, and our place in it, with clarity. Jackson: So the question he's really leaving us with is a personal one. It’s not just about global politics. It’s about what we, in our own lives, are choosing not to see. Olivia: That’s it exactly. What are the stories we tell ourselves to feel comfortable? And what would happen if we had the courage to look closer? We'd love to hear what our listeners think about this. Does writing have a moral duty? What stories have you learned that changed the way you see the world? Join the conversation on our social channels. Jackson: It’s a powerful challenge to leave us with. A call to be better readers of the world. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.