Ta’ Nehisi Coates (1975-) is a Black American writer whose journalism and other writing have made him an important voice in the ongoing discussion of race and history in the United States. In The Message, he engages in self-critique while making an argument about the connection between reality and narratives. Initially, Coates presents himself as a teacher, one who is an expert in his craft but who sees himself in comradeship with his students; to be a comrade is to be engaged as co-equals in a struggle or movement. There is thus a certain humility about that teacher persona: Coates admits that he has plenty to learn. He frames his subsequent account of his travels as homework owed to his students.

Coates continues in this vein in “On Pharaohs.” Coates the traveler is one who initially struggled to make sense of his own emotions and thoughts as he encountered a country that was likely the point of entry into slavery for many of the ancestors of Black Americans. He was by turns lonely, ecstatic, overwhelmed, and uneasy with each encounter in the country. As described later in the essay, he also visited the Door of No Return—a site that has long been misrepresented as the point of departure for millions of newly enslaved Africans.