THE WATER DANCER

by Ta Na-Hisi Coates >>>

It is hard to overstate the power of this book to conjure the deepest fears, pains, desires of the human condition. Ta Na-hisi Coates has written a masterpiece that reinforces the purpose of fiction for understanding history and the human condition. I read this book in the last week of 2020 - it was the best way to close this tumultuous journey around the sun where facing our worst demons and embracing our best selves is essential for survival. The narrative arc of this story that weaves the supernatural with the historical, trauma and PTSD with love and endurance, takes the reader on a path to essential understanding. So many themes of power, race, gender, psychological distress intersect and explode through language that moves with the power and grace of water.

This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children--the violent and capricious separation of families--and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today's most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.

Praise for The Water Dancer

"Ta-Nehisi Coates is the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race with his 2015 memoir, Between the World and Me. So naturally his debut novel comes with slightly unrealistic expectations--and then proceeds to exceed them. The Water Dancer . . . is a work of both staggering imagination and rich historical significance. . . . What's most powerful is the way Coates enlists his notions of the fantastic, as well as his fluid prose, to probe a wound that never seems to heal. . . . Timeless and instantly canon-worthy."--Rolling Stone