Ta-Nehisi Coates, in full Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, is an American essayist, journalist, and writer. He is globally known for exploring contemporary race relations. Coates had a worldwide readership at the time when he was working as a communicator at The Atlantic.
Coates has written about cultural, social, racial, and political issues. He has a deep understanding of African Americans and white dominance. One of the most notable works of Coates is Between the World and Me (2015). He has received the National Book Award for this nonfiction work.
Coates has worked for many well-known newspapers. They include The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time. He has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, The Oprah Magazine, and other publications.
Coates has published three non-fiction books, two series for Marvel Comics, and a novel as well that was published in 2019.
A Short Biography of Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates was born on September 30, 1975, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father’s name was William Paul Coates who was a Vietnam War veteran. William was also a member of the Black Panther Party, publisher, and librarian.
Coates’ mother’s name was Cheryl Lynn. She was a school teacher. Coates’ father was the founder of Black Classic Press. This publisher specialized in African-American titles. The Press grew immensely and eventually, it was established in the basement of Coates family home.
Coates’ father had seven children by four women. Coates has one other brother from her mother.
All the children were brought up together in a family that was held together by social and cultural ties. These children lived most of their life with their mothers and at times lived with their father as well. However, Coates once said that he lived with his father the whole time.
In his family, Coates said that the important thing that was focused on was bringing up children while teaching them basic values regarding family, such as respect for elders and being a positive and healthy contribution to one’s community.
This approach of the family was common in the community where Coates lived his childhood. Coates grew up in the Mondawmin neighbourhood of Baltimore when it was the peak of the crack epidemic.
Coates’ interest in books came into him at a quite early age. In response to bad behaviour, his mother would ask him to write essays. Because his father was associated with the Black Classic Press, it was a huge influence as well. Similarly, Coates has once said that he had read many of the books that his father published.
Coates attended several different schools that were present in the Baltimore area. These schools include William H. Lemmel Middle School and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. He attended Woodlawn High School and graduated from it.
Later on, Coates went to Howard University. He left the university after five years. After that, he started a career in journalism. In this way, Coates is the only child in his family who has no college degree.
Coates’ first name is Ta-Nehisi that originated from an Ancient Egyptian language name for Nubia. Nubia is a region along the Nile river in present-day northern Sudan and southern Egypt.
When Coates was a child, he enjoyed reading comic books and Dungeons & Dragons.
Coates lived in Paris for a residency for some time. After that, he lived in 2009 in Harlem, New York, USA, with his wife, Kenyatta Matthews, and son, Samori Maceo-Paul Coates. Coates met his wife at Howard University when they both were students there.
Coates is an atheist as well as a feminist. With his family, Coates shifted to Brooklyn, New York, in 2001. In 2016, he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa at Oregon State University.
As Coates is the man of the modern era, he interacts with his fans through social media. In December 2017, Coates had a following of over 1.25 million Twitter users. However, he deactivated his Twitter account when he showed disagreement with philosopher and activist Cornel West.
It was the matter of an editorial in The Guardian that was published under the title of “Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle”.
Professional Career
The professional career of Coates started as a journalist. He worked as a reporter at The Washington City Paper. Between 2000 and 2007, Coates served different publications as a journalist. They include Philadelphia Weekly, The Village Voice, and Time.
Coates’ first article for The Atlantic was under the title of “This Is How We Lost to the White Man.” It was about Bill Cosby and conservatism. This article started a fresh, more flourishing, and steady phase of his career. After this, Coates started writing regularly for The Atlantic. His blog became popular and influential. It attracted a large community.
After this, Coates was promoted to become a senior editor at The Atlantic. He wrote feature articles as well as maintained his blog. The topics that Coates covered in his writing were about politics, race, history, and culture. He has a deep eye on music and sports as well.
His most important writing about race includes “Fear of a Black President” and “The Case for Reparations.” He was praised for these works and his blogs became the Best Blogs of 2011 list by Time Magazine.
When Coates was asked about the success of “The Case for Reparations”, he said that whenever he writes something, he does a lot of research for it. He said that he worked on the article for two years. He studied the race and exploitation of black urban Americans.
The article was focused on racism and discrimination. Later on, Coates rejected the offer from The New York Times to become a regular columnist. However, he worked as a guest columnist.
Important Works of Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Beautiful Struggle
In 2008, Coates published a memoir under the title The Beautiful Struggle. It is about his life in West Baltimore and its effect on him.
In this book, he has discussed the impact of his father, the dominant street crime of the era, and its influence on his older brother. He has also explained his own troubled experience of going into Baltimore-area schools.
The book highlights Coates’ graduation and enrollment at Howard University. All these aspects of his life discussed in the book suggest that Coates takes inspiration from his surroundings and personal experiences.
The book sheds light on the life of a man who lives in the world of an absent father. Critics believe that the book discusses the father-son relationship that is new. They say that the book provides a deep insight into Coates’ journey as a thinker and writer.
Between the World and Me
This book was published in July 2015. The book discusses how the lives of African Americans are affected physically. It highlights that blacks are enslaved and kept under violent circumstances. The book won many awards and was listed on The Guardian list of 100 best books of the twenty-first century.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Views about Racism
One of the most obvious themes in Coates’ works is the racial division that exists in America. The theme runs throughout Between the World and Me. The racial divide has started from early American history when blacks were enslaved.
Till the present day, black lives are under constant violence, injustice, and threat. The reason for this is that white people have always denied the rights and humanity of blacks because they want to maintain their fake authority.
Coates believes that racism generated race and it is not the other way around. For him, race is a construct. White people are not white but they think that they are white because it gives them a feeling of superiority and privilege.
Racism is thus so insidious because the people think they are white but they never admit that they are racists. They want to accumulate wealth. They think that only they have the right to get a better education and fair treatment by the government.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Views about The Dream
Coates has highlighted the truth of the dream in his writing, such as Between the World and Me. For him, the dream does not mean luxurious home, lavish parties, and extra money. This idea of the dream is created by historians and Hollywood.
It is accessible by white people but Coates says that black people suffer and are marginalized by them.
Coates has discussed in the book that the dream requires ignorance and blindness to the realities of the black.
Importance of Family Ties for Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates lived in a family where his father has children from women. He lived in America under the weight of the dream that proved a constantly different threat for black women and men. However, he has overcome these threats through the support, love, and acceptance of his extended black family.
Coates’ Between the World and Me is a letter from a father to his son. It is filled with accounts of friends, intellectual people, and elders. He even quotes black writers who focus on family ties.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Views about Writing Process and his Writing Style
Writing under Pressure
Coates believes that we are under the most pressure, then is when we surprise ourselves.
Coates has experienced it himself. He was an unemployed writer when he was trying to finish his memoir. At the same time, he was facing huge responsibilities and deadlines. He says that at that time, he fell into a dark and stressful place.
Additionally, he mentions in his The Atlantic interview that he was hitting his head against the wall and nothing was coming out of it. Then he realized that he simply was not properly prepared to do what he was trying to do.
When the memoir came out, he said that he was surprised by the work that came out of the sort of stress. In that pressure, he wrote different sentences that have a lot more power than those that he wrote before.
On the contrary, he says about his writing style that one should not impose stress on himself purposely so that he will start writing awesome sentences. His style suggests that while in stress, a person needs to channel his energy and focus it on the work that is in the row to be done.
Writing with Modesty
One of the secrets of Coates’ excellent writing is his modesty. He does not live and work like a mysterious and furrowed alcoholic. Similarly, he does not live like an otherworldly man who has supreme skills. Instead, he is a thoughtful, talented, and hard-working guy. He discusses it himself in the process of his writing.
According to Coates, his writing style and process is not mystical. It is a repeated action and in the end, the masterpiece comes out of the hard work that one has no idea he could have ever done.
Revision, Re-edition, and Re-writing
Furthermore, Coates believes that his writing is like trying to write down a piece of particular music that is in his head. Unfortunately, no one can do it because transcribing music on a page is a very difficult process. For this reason, he admits that his first attempts are unsatisfying and are at odds with what he is trying to communicate. So, he does it over and over again.
Eventually, he revises his work, edits, rewrites, and edits it again. It suggests that The Beautiful Struggle was never the same as it is now when it was first written.
By now, it is quite clear that the writing process for Coates is about reframing, exploiting, and enjoying the negative aspects attached to it. For Coates, the writing process is hard but this is how he has progressed from no one to a worldwide known writer. Coates defines writing as a process where a person continuously experiences failure but it is not at all a bad thing.
In his writing style, he embraces fear of failure and then nips in the bud to create magic. In this way, failure is a significant component of his writing process but it is not the end; it’s the middle.
Coates says that he treats failure as a stepping stone toward improvement; therefore, it must be considered as necessary and good.
Coates also believes that none of his books has a perfect text. There is always something imperfect between the writer’s imagined work and the physical appearance of their ability.
Relationship Between One’s Lifestyle and One’s Writing Career
Besides this, Coates suggests that if a writer wants to increase chances of success in any field, he must first change his lifestyle to fit that success. In this way, he keeps his life outside writing very calm, measured, and scheduled. Being a writer, he believes that he needs so much time and he does not want distractions. He keeps the right group of friends.
He further clarifies that a stable and calm life helps him to put his creative, wild, and exciting energy into writing properly. He believes that if he is regular and ordinary in his personal life, he will be wildly creative and excited in his professional life. His personal life discipline helps him to write better every time.
Aestheticism and Clarity
Although Coates began as journalists, he has a keen eye for aesthetics. His prose shows an appreciation for beauty and poetry. He does not run after beauty for the sake of it or to distract readers from his content. Rather, he wants his language to clarify whatever he is talking about.
In an interview, Coates said that he tries to clarify. He creates beauty to make people understand and not to distract them. He writes in such a way that makes people feel things. He said that he does not want readers to read whatever he is writing and just says that they think it is right. He wants to write something in such a way that people read and when they walk away, they feel haunted by his words.
In this way, he suggests the role of pathos in both fictional and journalistic writing. In Between the World and Me, he has not only tried to appeal to people’s emotions. He has not only deepens readers’ attention but also makes them more sympathetic and understanding to whatever point he as a narrator or the characters are making. Coates is the master of creating pathos.
Awards
1: Hillman Prize (2012)
2: National Magazine Award ( 2013)
3: George Polk Award (2014)
4: Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Prize (2015)
5: National Book Award (2015)
6: Kirkus prize for nonfiction (2015)
7: Dayton Literary Peace Prize (2018)
8: Eisner Award (2018)