The Message

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. Coates describes discovering how stories can be used to maintain oppressive power structures. When have you realized that a narrative you had accepted was working to maintain existing power dynamics?

2. In “On Pharaohs,” Coates confronts how his idealized image of Africa differs from its reality. Describe a time when visiting a place important to your identity challenged your preconceptions.

3. Throughout the book, Coates speaks of the “emancipatory mandate” of writers to tell truth through stories. What responsibilities do you believe writers have to their readers and to society?

4. What books or articles have challenged your worldview in ways similar to Coates’s experience in reading about the #MeToo movement?

5. When visiting Dakar, Senegal, Coates experiences feelings of both connection and alienation from a place he hoped would feel like home. Has your relationship with a place ever been similarly complex?

Explore broader implications and cultural relevance.

1. Coates describes how historical narratives can be weaponized to justify oppression. What current social or political narratives function similarly today?

2. What perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict presented in “The Gigantic Dream” diverge most significantly from the dominant narratives in your own media environment?

3. Coates connects the attempts to ban his book in South Carolina to broader efforts to control historical narratives. What does the current wave of book banning in America reveal about the power of storytelling?

Examine technical and thematic elements.

1. Examine the role that quotations from writers like Frederick Douglass, Audre Lorde, and Edward Said play in strengthening Coates’s arguments about a writer’s responsibility.

2. Coates positions himself differently throughout the book—sometimes as a teacher, sometimes as a student, sometimes as a journalist. What effect do these shifting narrative postures have on your reading experience?

3. The journalistic approach of using personal experiences as primary evidence differs from Joan Didion’s more detached style in essays like those in Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Which approach better addresses topics related to identity and power?

4. What does Coates mean by “clarity” in writing? How is this clarity achieved? Is it primarily a matter of technique, or of character? 

5. Coates begins with an epigraph from George Orwell and frames the entire book as a letter to his students. What purpose do these framing devices serve?

6. In the final essay, Coates describes feeling overwhelmed by his experiences in Palestine. What limitations of journalism does this revelation suggest?