I suppose this post will be redundant, because I simply want to call attention to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s beautiful series of blog entries about his first trip to France–his first trip out of the U.S.–and I guess that anyone reading this, reads TNC way before me.
Ostensibly traveling abroad to continue his education in the French language, Coates has made little mention of speaking or learning French. What he writes about, instead, is his usual combination of social criticism, identity politics, and the history of America. Like the non-fiction essays James Baldwin wrote in France, which mainly concern the U.S. and Baldwin’s place within/without his homeland, Coates’s traveling experiences are generating some amazing introspection, metaphors, and just plain beautiful writing on insider/outsider-ness. Reconsidering Americans’ use of language and “privilege” allowed Coates to write one of the most beautiful sentences I’ve read in a while:
It takes a particular kind of tyranny to demand access to everyone’s power, to everyone’s family reunion.
Follow the link to see the context and to follow some amazing travel writing/thinking.
