Ta-Nehisi Coates' first work of fiction, which reflects on the power of memory, follows an enslaved man with superhuman capabilities who joins the underground resistance.
One of the many tasks of the writer is to remember in words, so that we may all remember too. Recollection is a potent mechanism for creating new mythologies of black life and futures. Ta-Nehisi Coates' vocation has been the work of memory, for to acknowledge the past, against what is understood as "American history", is to honour the present with an insistent truth. Only then can a proper collective healing and equity begin.
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