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Prose is haunting. According to Mr. Coates this is what he was after, words that haunt, that make you remember, that force you to share. On this order he has delivered greatly. “Haunt. You’ve heard me say this word a lot. It is never enough for the reader of your words to be convinced. The goal is to haunt—to have them think about your words before bed, see them manifest in their dreams, tell their partner about them the next morning, to have them grab random people on the street, shake them and say, ‘Have you read this yet?’�� Mr. Coates brings an unblinking honesty to the page as he renders up a message about writing and a writer’s responsibility.

And he does it wrapped in his travels to three different locations. Dakar, Senegal, Columbia, SC and most impressively Palestine. Mr. Coates is a courageous and erudite young Man sharing his thoughts without concern of any potential blowback. This type of honest writing makes for very compelling reading.

“I am trying to urge you towards something new—not simply against their myths of conquest, but against the urge to craft your own. But this is a negative proposition—a description of what should not be, but not what should be—and it creates an absence in the place of a myth. How do we fill the void? For even as I left the myth of utopic African origin, I still felt something—a sense that I could not die without going home.��

Readers, you will be challenged to reexamine some of the positions you hold concerning inequality, oppression, and the power of stories, and who gets to tell them. This book qualifies as a tour de force. Make this a certain purchase on October 1, 2024.