Amherst will welcome author, journalist and National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates to campus on Tuesday, September 13, at LeFrak Gymnasium. He will deliver a talk entitled “Race in America” at 6:30 p.m., and then take questions from the audience.
Mr. Coates’ Between the World and Me (2015), written as an open letter to his teenaged son, received the National Book Award for nonfiction. The National Book Foundation called it “a brutally honest portrayal of the plight of the African-American male in this country …. Incorporating history and personal memoir, Coates has succeeded in creating an essential text for any thinking American today.” The book has become a New York Times best seller, and was named one of the 10 best books of the year by numerous national newspapers and magazines.
Mr. Coates is also the author of a memoir, The Beautiful Struggle (2008), about growing up in Baltimore during the age of crack cocaine. Booklist called it a “beautifully written, loving portrait of a strong father bringing his sons to manhood.”
As a national correspondent for The Atlantic, Mr. Coates writes about culture, politics and social issues. His June 2014 feature on reparations won the prestigious George Polk Award for commentary and was described by New York magazine as “probably the most discussed magazine piece of the Obama era.” He has also received the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism and a MacArthur Fellowship, and this April was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.
Mr. Coates serves as Journalist-in-Residence at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He was previously the Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar at MIT.
Coates’ talk is free and open to the public, and members of the Amherst College community will receive priority seating. Tickets are required.
Amherst Books will be at the event selling Between the World and Me, Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and issues 1, 2 and 3 of the Black Panther comic book.
This event is made possible by the generosity of the Victor S. Johnson 1882-1943 Lectureship Fund and the Croxton Lecture Fund, which were established by alumni and their families to bring distinguished speakers to the College.