In total, the personal writing develops a portrait of the artist: first, as a young man in a Harlem unemployment office, then as a burgeoning blogger identifying his subjects, and finally, as a critic whose magazine publications have become socio-literary events. Whether studying Michelle Obama from a distance or interviewing Bill Cosby over lunch, weighing the life and influence of Malcolm X or calculating the economic and psychological devastations that mass incarceration wreaks on black families, Coates couches his analyses in a synthesis of investigative and reported journalism, African American studies, political science, sociology, literary criticism and American history.Ĭoates fronts each piece with context-shaping, prefatory narratives. Made up primarily of nine essays originally published in the Atlantic from 2008 to 2017, Coates has arranged this new volume to showcase his abilities as an essayist and a memoirist.
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