Tag: ta-nehisi coates

This week, we’re sharing stories from Ta-Nehisi Coates, Katie Engelhart, Katy Vine, Zach Baron, and Colin Dickey.

Author Jesmyn Ward sits down with Ta-Nehisi Coates to discuss slavery, superheroes, and how much you have to hate yourself to enjoy being famous.

We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in essays.

In an excerpt from his upcoming book on the Obama administration, Coates constructs an incisive look at Donald Trump’s political ascent.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Ta-Nehisi Coates; Nikole Hannah-Jones; Mark Collette, David Hunn, and Mike Hixenbaugh; Natalie Kitroeff and Victoria Kim; and Robert Minto.

Obama was born into a country where laws barring his very conception—let alone his ascendancy to the presidency—had long stood in force. A black president would always be a contradiction for a government that, throughout most of its history, had oppressed black people. The attempt to resolve this contradiction through Obama—a black man with deep […]

Black Cardigan is a great newsletter by writer-editor Carrie Frye, who shares dispatches from her reading life. We’re thrilled to share some of them on Longreads. Go here to sign up for her latest updates. * * * When I was in college I was pretty good at gadding around (sorry to boast!), and spring was my very best […]

RG: Discussions about race, particularly in mixed company, are often combative and contentious. How the hell do we talk about race? TC: No idea. I just try to communicate with as much honesty and respect as possible. I think we should not forget that a not so insufficient portion of this country sees it as […]

Coates has made a name for himself by pointing out how structural racism continues to pervade in the U.S.

We have to demand accountability from one another and stand up for people of color—in the streets, in our Facebook feeds, in our offices and homes.

Rioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain.

Eva Holland is a journalist based in the Yukon who has written for publications including Pacific Standard and SB Nation. Her latest Longreads Original, “‘It’s Yours’,” explores the life (and maybe death) of an internet commenter community, “the Horde,” that Ta-Nehisi Coates helped foster at The Atlantic. I spoke with her via email about her […]

How Ta-Nehisi Coates built the best comment section on the internet—and why it can’t last.

Compared with my classmates on the second tier, my test scores were on the lower end. Each week, in my literature class, we were responsible for the recitation of some French poems (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Lamartine) from memory, and each day we had to recite a stanza. This sort of exercise may well be familiar to […]

We must imagine a new country. Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken […]