meet the author: ta-nehisi coates
The great American author will present The Message, a new and highly personal essay on the power of literature.
A co-production by Passa Porta, Espace Magh and Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre
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Ta-Nehisi Coates needs no introduction. In 2015 this American journalist (for The Atlantic) caused a sensation with Between the World and Me, an essay written as a long letter to his son (then aged 15) about the condition of being Black in the United States. A major work of reflection on police brutality and the memory of slavery, among others, it earned Ta-Nehisi Coates the National Book Award that same year.
Over the past ten years, Coates has written other essays (The Case for Reparations) and made a notable foray into fiction with a novel, The Water Dancer. He has also written for the award-winning Black Panther series. He now returns with The Message, a collection of highly personal essays on the power of literature in life.
Between Senegal, South Carolina and Palestine
How do the stories we tell – and those we keep silent – shape our view of the world? Travelling across three places of conflict (Senegal, South Carolina and Palestine), Ta-Nehisi Coates questions the ability of literature to emancipate us from identity conflicts and political myths.
In doing so, he intimately questions the power of literature and highlights the need for us to free ourselves from the destructive grip of myths. And the urgency of embracing the liberating power of truths, even those that are most difficult to hear.
During his visit to Brussels, Ta-Nehisi Coates will be in conversation with writer Estelle-Sarah Bulle, who is in residence at Passa Porta in December.
An exceptional meeting.
About the author
Born in 1975 in Baltimore, Ta-Nehisi Coates lives in Harlem with his wife and sons. An activist and journalist, and a long-time correspondent for The Atlantic, he received the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism in 2012, the prestigious George Polk Award in 2014, and the National Book Award in 2015. He is the author of, among others, Between the World and Me, The Beautiful Struggle, and The Case for Reparations.
About the moderator
French-Guadeloupean writer Estelle-Sarah Bulle has published three novels with Éditions Liana Levi. Where dogs barks with their tails (Stanislas Prize 2018, Carbet Prize for the Whole World and the Caribbean 2018, Eugène Dabit Prize, APTOM Prize, and others), Les étoiles les plus filantes and Basses terres. She has just released Histoire sentimentale de mes cheveux. Invited for a residency at Passa Porta in December, she will be working on her fourth novel.
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