ta nehisi coates we were eight years in power pdf

The book consists of an introduction, eight essays and a conclusion. It also talks about slavery in America and how it still affects people today.

The book focuses on his time as an author and gives insight into what he thinks about America’s racial progressions since Obama was elected president. This book is a collection of essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who writes about race relations and the Black identity. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.1-Page Summary of We Were Eight Years In Power Overall Summary 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. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, 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. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

The National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”*-including the election of Donald Trump.

Ta nehisi coates we were eight years in power pdf