We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Black leaders during the Reconstruction era bemoaned the fact that “we were eight years in power” as the experiment in multiracial democracy in the United States came to an end with the restoration of white supremacist control in the South. Ta-Nehisi Coates examines the terrible echoes of that history in our time in this expansive collection of new and chosen pieces. Coates contends that America’s “first white president” was elected as a result of the unusual election of a black president and the ensuing ferocious response.
We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
84 used from $2.22
Free shipping
Amazon.com
But, the tale of these eight recent years is not merely one of presidential politics. This book also looks at the new voices, movements, and ideas for justice that developed during this time, as well as the repercussions of the lingering, menacing shadow cast by our country’s troubled past. Through the lens of a teenage writer who starts his trip in a Harlem unemployment office and concludes it in the White Office, interviewing the president, Coates powerfully analyses the events of the Obama period.
With eight new essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, We Were Eight Years in Power includes Coates’s renowned essays that were first published in The Atlantic, such as “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” and is capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the time.
One of the key voices of this momentous era provides a crucial narrative of modern America in We Were Eight Years in Power. Coates is a wonderful young man who is a really grounded and talented writer. It doesn’t matter if you agree with everything he says or not; he is narrating a tale in what may be the most singular period in our history. This includes not only the image but also every minute detail of the frame, the hooks on the back, the covered wall, and the persistent nail holes. A young buck who was listening and closely observing what brothers like Claude and Cooper took great whiffs off in their own illuminating journeys is the one who tells this intriguing story, not an older one.
There are a few instances when Coates thinks about his ability to attract readers of all races and in particular the fact that so many white readers appear to appreciate and relate to his writing. I contend that his writing fills a unique niche in literature where themes and topics that are typically very contentious are thoughtfully and skillfully examined, elevating them to a higher plane of consideration above the usual volleys of criticism that usually accompany even the anticipation of their debate.
Simply put, Ta-Nahesi Coates is such a gifted essayist and journalist that he is able to defy gravity here and make points in a way that is alternately brutal and tender in their honesty, while never veering into cliche, invective, circular arguments, ad-hominem attack, or any other type of trap that awaits those who strike out on the trail he has chosen to brave.
Along the way, he makes the audacious assertion that he aspires to be a contemporary of James Baldwin. Coming from almost any other author, that would sound naive or even ridiculous. It is chilling and sobering to hear it from Coates because of how true it is.
Coates, like Baldwin, is that rarest of gems: a writer who, when most are running away from a potentially dangerous subject, runs toward it. When tackling that subject, Coates not only refuses to be defined by it, but also refuses to define it in conventional ways, instead sifting through the muck to find the truth and communicating it in a way that is elegant, profound, and beautiful in its simplicity of meaning yet complexity of style. It is clear that Coates pays close attention to even the smallest word choices and phrase constructions. In the end, his work is like a symphony, where various components combine to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
