Ta-Nehisi Coates on 'The Water Dancer,' the 2020 Election, and How to Become a Writer
When it comes to releasing a debut novel, most authors–even Ta-Nehisi Coates—don't automatically expect a positive reception, much less to become an Oprah's Book Club Pick. "You could build a monument out of the essayists who sought to be novelists," he jokes. But Coates says he enjoyed stepping into the world of fiction by publishing The Water Dancer in 2019. His historical novel follows the story of Hiram Walker, a young man born as a slave on a plantation in Virginia who has been gifted a mysterious, magical power that eventually saves his life.
The Water Dancer, however, was Coates fourth book. The author first began writing around age 17, and went on to work for several publications, including The Village Voice and TIME, before writing three non-fiction books. In 2015, he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for one of them: Between the World and Me, a letter written to his son about his experience as a Black man in America. This year, Between the World and Me was adapted for HBO as a special feature, with appearances by Angela Bassett, Mahershala Ali, and our very own Oprah.
And like Oprah, Coates has always adored reading, particularly fantasy and science fiction. In fact, Dungeons & Dragons and comic books helped inspire his love of literature. "I had books all over my house," he says. "Our whole house was basically a library. There was no higher power after my parents other than books and learning."
In November, O's editor in chief Lucy Kaylin sat down for a virtual chat with Coates over Zoom to discuss The Water Dancer—now available in paperback—as well as politics and the lessons he's learned in quarantine. Plus, Coates shared some essential advice for any aspiring writers out there.
Ahead, some highlights from their Q&A.
I’d like to start with The Water Dancer. “It pierced my soul,” Oprah said when she chose the book for her book club.
The book takes Hiram, someone from this brutally disempowered realm, and imbues him with what I think we can call superpowers. It struck me as a very inventive idea, but also a profoundly poignant one. Can you tell us a little more about that as a literary device that really powers the book?
I spent in total about 10 years I think on the story of The Water Dancer. It really began from a frustration in that, the depictions of enslavement that I read and that I saw were often quite different from what I saw in the first person dialogues about enslavement. It may seem somewhat bizarre or strange, in general, to take an enslaved person and invoke the supernatural, but when I was doing the research for this book, something that constantly came across was that the world of the enslaved from the perspective of the enslaved was full of the supernatural and the fantastic.
When you talk about someone like Frederick Douglass, when he tells his story of escape. It’s not simply a mathematical get from point A to point Z—he has an elderly adviser who gives him a route and tells him “This will render you invisible so people aren’t able to see you as you make your escape.” When I went into the oral histories, there were all sorts of myths and ideas about powers that enslaved people could use.
One of my favorites was that if you put graveyard dust in your shoes, the hounds wouldn’t be able to track you. Harriet Tubman, who very much depicted herself as a mystical figure—or a spiritual figure, someone touched by God, felt called by God, was revered and had the nickname Moses. The world of enslaved people, specifically the world of the Underground Railroad, is a world of heroics, epics, and sagas—and yes, the world is charged with the supernatural. It’s not often depicted that way. It wasn’t that much of a reach for me to put it in the book.
Hiram's power of "Conduction" has got such a wonderful, magical, spiritual quality to it, but also the business of a flawless memory allows one to unsparingly bear witness and to see things as they were and as they are.
I found that a very provocative notion to lay on a society that often wants badly to forget—or at least whitewash—some of the absolute worst of our history. I love the Harriet Tubman figure when she has that wonderful phrase, “Memory is the chariot.” Can you tell us some more about that, about the importance of bearing witness—seeing things as they really are?
It’s tough to remember. It’s tough to see things, no matter which side of the ledger you sit on. Certainly there is a metaphor in Hiram and a white society that’s enslaved him, that insists on not seeing or remembering what it’s done. On the other side, for Hiram as an enslaved person, who feels that he cannot live—he cannot exist—if he remembers what was done to his mother. Here’s a guy that has a gift of remembering every single thing he’s seen and heard, but can’t remember the thing that’s probably most essential to him. I thought it was important to do that, because I think in the broader politic, it is so hard to remember.
A friend of mine worked on The 1619 Project for The New York Times, and it was subject to an executive order—why? What is going on there? One of the things that became clear to me if history is remembered as The 1619 Project was called into being remembered, it calls into question so much. So much is difficult about that. In The New York Times the other day, there was a piece about how Alexander Hamilton owned slaves—the good founder! The good founder held slaves. If we have to remember that even Hamilton is doing this, how do we construct ourselves? What do we build ourselves on? What is best about us? Memory presents these kinds of difficulties that leave you blocked. Memories don’t always make us proud. They don’t always make us feel great.
If we sit with them, they can be revelatory. They can help us better understand ourselves and the human condition. They just don’t always build us up.
I don’t want to fail to mention that other works of yours have been transmogrified, and of course, Between the World and Me will be on HBO November 21 featuring Oprah, Angela Bassett, Mahershala Ali. It sounds like an extraordinary piece in the making. Can you tell us about that?
It’s a funny experience to have, to adapt something like that. Obviously you don’t just want to put a book on screen. You want to do something different, and I think that largely succeeded. The acting in that is phenomenal, and I think that Camila Forbes who directed it and really oversaw and envisioned the whole thing did a phenomenal job. I think it has impeccable timing. To be coming out weeks after the election, after the summer we’ve had, going into what must be the third wave of Covid as we are, I think a lot of people will be excited by it.
Let’s pivot to the election a little bit. Let’s start with the role of the Black vote, the role of Black women, starting with Kamala Harris and Stacey Abrams, or the role of the late John Lewis. From your point of view, what went so right there and why?
First of all, I think that if you are a Black woman in this country you exist at the nexus of—how do I put this—you are automatically put into two classes of people that are considered less than, right off the bat. What that means is you are automatically exposed to the cruelties of the world in a way that other people are not.
I want to make this as explicit and specific as I possibly can: As a much younger man, much, much younger, when I got to New York, it was a habit of mine to go out with my friends to bars and clubs and drink and be merry and have a good time. Sometimes I drank to the point of intoxication—not much, but sometimes I did. At night, we have a fabulous subway system here in New York, and I would catch the train home late at night. I thought nothing of sitting on a subway train and falling asleep until my stop came. There’s a kind of freedom in that. It may not be wise for anybody to do, but it’s a kind of thing a woman really can’t do.
There are things that happen, things that take place that I didn’t have to worry about. That’s a small example. All through life, very specific things. All of these micro oppressions that pile up, and then on top of all of that, you’re Black. I say all these types of things to say it’s not a mistake to look at who’s at the cutting edge of activism. It’s not a mistake that you’re seeing three Black women. I mean Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris, Keisha Lance Bottoms. It’s not a mistake. It’s because of where Black women have typically existed in a society.
I wanted to digress at the mention of Kamala Harris’ name. She graduated from Howard University, you attended Howard, you intersected with the late Chadwick Boseman at Howard. It’s an elite HBCU. Can you talk to us just a bit about that, as it would seem a very wonderful and fruitful environment for you to be in as you were launching yourself into the world.
The best way to think about it is I spent 18 years of my life being raised by these two lovely, weird, very, very brilliant Black people. Then I went to a university filled with lovely, really, really weird, brilliant, Black people. That’s an unusual thing that I had those experiences piled on top of each other. Howard is again one of these places formed in the ghost of Jim Crow and segregation, a time where Black folks were basically piled into only certain places if they were interested in pursuing their intellectual pursuits. That’s a horrible thing, but the one good thing or one of the good things that comes out of this is folks are tight. There’s a nexus, there’s a place that you go to find certain things, and everybody recognizes it, and everybody knows it. HBCUs have historically been that. It was certainly that at Howard University. Again, it’s not a mistake that the first woman and first African American to successfully become vice president elect came from Howard.
And of course Stacey Abrams went to Spelman. It’s a wonderful environment.
There’s something in that. These are places where you have the ability to think about yourself and not really have to worry about the exterior. Stacey Abrams at Spelman, she’s free to be a Black woman around Black women, and not have the kind of conversations and the worries that one might typically have to have. Safe spaces they call it. I know that’s not in vogue these days, but…
I get it. Of course there were some fairly aggressive efforts to disrupt the process in this election starting with Trump casting doubt on mail-in ballots and what the counting of ballots was going to be like. There certainly were times during this where it felt like democracy was teetering. It felt fragile. I’m just wondering how it was for you during that process. Did you feel that same way, or did you have a core of hope about how this would go?
I still feel that way. Democracy in America is not a state, it’s a deeply contested notion. I would certainly argue that for almost the first 200 years of American history, you really can’t consider America a democracy. Let me be real clear about what I mean by that: For the first century, you have just about 40 percent of the southern population that’s enslaved. As a matter of fact, they’re written out of the body politic. This has a particular impact in a country like America that empowers the states.
For instance, in South Carolina the majority of people are under slavery were Black people and were enslaved and they were written completely out of the body politic. The majority of people in Mississippi, half the people in Alabama, half the people in Louisiana are just completely written out. These are states that are sending two senators to the office. Virginia, the state that had the most enslaved people throughout the antebellum period is sending president after president. All of it built foundationally on a lack of democracy, and the people that are going are themselves enslavers.
The period after slavery, except for a brief 10 or 12 years during Reconstruction, while most people are not enslaved, they’re still written out of democracy. As late as the 1920s, the majority of people in Mississippi were effectively not citizens, the majority of people in South Carolina. Much of what we are proud of in terms of our legislation and our policies, the New Deal for instance, explicitly would not have been possible without white supremacy. I don’t mean that as a label or an insult or a slur. There were literal white supremacist senators in the Klan, from Mississippi. I’m talking in the most literal sense I can.
Only really, I would argue, in my lifetime—late ‘60s early ‘70s—can you begin to talk about America as a democracy. If you think about it that way, it is not surprising you would find yourself in 2020 with democracy as a deeply contested notion.
What would you say is the single most concrete thing that the Biden administration could do right out of the gate to affect some kind of change with regard to racial injustice and systemic racism?
Get a decent attorney general.
It can’t get much worse.
No, it can’t get much worse. While this has impact across the country, it especially has specific impact in African American communities. The Obama administration under Eric Holden and under Loretta Lynch you had an aggressive justice department that investigated police departments and took real action. Also, this is not as specific yet it ultimately is, certainly getting a handle on Covid. Look, everyone is suffering, I want to be clear about that. But Black and brown people are suffering a little bit more. Getting a handle on that would be a big, big deal.
What about this ever-growing rift that we face—I mean yes, Trump was defeated, but over 70 million people voted for him. Does that look to you like it’s going to be fraught and bifurcated for however long? What do you think could be done?
I think it’s the work of generations and not the work of a presidential elections. There’s 70 million people in America who think it’s a good idea to have a president who brags about sexual assault, or don’t think it’s disqualifying. There’s 70 million people who don’t think it’s disqualifying to have a Muslim ban, to build a wall, to corrupt public institutions, to allow upward of a quarter million Americans to die within a year. I don’t know what a state is if a state is not there to protect against the death of a quarter million Americans.
While elections are important, they are not the entirety of the work of politics. There are all sorts of arguments that are made outside of elections that need to continue to be made. The hope is probably in future generations rather than in our lifetime.
Speaking of rifts, let’s take a look at the Democratic party. Lots of mainstream Democrats are pointing fingers at the left wing of the party for what they perceive to be a radical agenda, among what they perceive to be third rail issues like defunding the police, Black Lives Matter, medicare for all, etc. Is this just the rough and tumble debate getting to an eventual consensus requires or do you see something fundamentally amiss and bifurcated about the Democratic party?
Probably is the rough and tumble. The Democratic party is a broad coalition. Some of this is somewhat natural, but I do think people get confused about who is wearing what hat. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for example represents a safely Democratic district. It should not be surprising that she speaks like somebody who probably will not get primaried. For instance, in the Republican party, the most radical politicians and congressmen come from places where they probably won’t face a primary.
Folks who are occupying more contested places and more swing districts, it’s equally understandable that they’re not going to speak like the most radical members. That makes sense to me. I think, and I could be wrong, I think what a lot of folks in the center feel like is they are being held responsible for the rhetoric of other people. I don’t know that that’s the left’s fault. Everybody has to represent their coalition. Look, if you’re in a centrist district I don’t expect you to go out and yell “Medicare for all, defund the police!” That would not be my expectation. That’s how it should be.
Speaking of these third rail issues: reparations. You wrote the seminal piece about it “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic in 2014, and I know a lot has happened since then. You’ve testified eloquently, and you’ve written more about it. But with the Biden administration getting set to move into the White House in January, what are your feelings now about the viability, the likelihood of something actually happening there?
Probably pretty dead, for the moment. I’ve always thought reparations are in the general category of the work of generations. It takes a lot of convincing to get people to accept that a debt was even owed. I certainly testified before congress but I don’t know that that’s always the best venue to make the case. I think what you need is a ground swell in the country that then reaches those higher levels. Politics is not just our politicians—it’s our activists, it’s our writers, it’s our people out in the streets, broad groups like our churches.
I wanted to get your thoughts on your hopefulness. Generally speaking, when you think about being your son’s age 25 years ago, is there anything that gives you hope about what seems like progress for the future?
You're asking me this question at a moment where we had—as far as I am concerned—a quarter million presentable deaths, and I just I've got to be very real about that. We have a president whose political ascent began in the most naked racism, birtherism that powered him to the highest office and the greatest power in the world. So much has happened over the four years. I blame leadership because it is the job of those given stewardship over institutions to protect the public and they did not do that. I’ll stop there.
We’ve lost hundreds of thousands of lives, although there’s also people feeling there have been revelations, some realigning of priorities. Any revelations for you during your experience of this, beside the tragedy of it all?
Yeah, but it probably just reinforces the things that I already knew. My family is really important, my friends are really important. They should be treasured; every day should be treasured. If you have an opportunity to see your mother, see her. If you have an opportunity to see your father, see him. You never know when something’s going to happen and you won’t be able to see them for god knows how long, if ever again. Very, very basic things.
One last question. There are people who wanted me to ask you: What is your advice for young writers?
That’s a fun one. Read, read, read, read, read. Write, write, write, write, write. Rinse and repeat. Do it until you get somewhere. Don’t submit to the myth of writer’s block. All it means is what you’re writing on the page is not what you think you should be writing. Sit your butt in a chair and write something. The cure for writer's block is when you can't write, try typing. Just type. You have to do. Writing really is a craft, and it has to be practiced over and over and over and over and over again.
My advice is to keep practicing and don’t give up. It’s very easy to give up. I was in a somewhat fortunate position in that I dropped out of school, and so I couldn’t go back to law school. I couldn’t get an MBA—there was nothing. It was either writing or nothing. I just kept going. But I broke relatively late, well into my 30s. The lesson for me is that you keep going and going and going. Persistence is underrated and talent is incredibly overrated. Remember that.
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