Christopher Qualls

I’m a white man. When I began reading this book, I was immediately in love. The writing is incredible. The story is enthralling. Initially I thought, “wow, this is such a new, fresh original storytelling. The magic and eloquence are mystifying.” As I continued reading, I realized that while I am correct that the writing is exquisite and eloquent, this is neither new nor original. This is the type of bewildering beauty that has run in the veins of black Americans from the time they were stolen from their families and enslaved all the way to now. This story is not fresh. It is written in the DNA of millions of African Americans. And I began to grow very sad. My thinking that this is new and novel is a function of white culture being the dominate culture in the United States. It is a function of white privilege and white supremacy and racism. How sad that the dominant culture—white culture—is choking out and hiding such beautiful works as this. Black art deserves to be seen, read, heard, and appreciated. This is an incredible work. I loved it. I have become a huge Coates fan and am already planning to search out more examples of black excellence in literature so that I can remedy the giant chasm my literary experience was built around thanks to systemic racism. Bravo, Coates. I am so mystified