In the prefatory “notes” to each essay (and year), in which the author provides both the context of each composition and its role in his growth as a writer, Coates admits that, for the first four of these years, He was still learning his craft. In We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me (2015), has given us not only another essential work of African American literature but also a classic example of American prose.Īlthough it lacks the concentrated power and beauty of Between the World and Me, there is a good reason for this, for it is a collection of eight essays written for The Atlantic Monthly over a period of eight years, the years of the Obama presidency. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.
We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates's iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including Fear of a Black President, The Case for Reparations and The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration, along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates's own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective-the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period-and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation's old and unreconciled history.
Now Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first white president."īut the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics.
"We were eight years in power" was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South.
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