WRITER

Ta-Nehisi Coates

1975 - Today

Photo of Ta-Nehisi Coates

Icon of person Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates ( TAH-nə-HAH-see; born September 30, 1975) is an American author, journalist, and activist. He gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.Coates has worked for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Ta-Nehisi Coates has received more than 4,398,742 page views. His biography is available in 19 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 15 in 2019). Ta-Nehisi Coates is the 7,156th most popular writer (down from 6,385th in 2019), the 17,271st most popular biography from United States (down from 15,810th in 2019) and the 1,165th most popular American Writer.

Memorability Metrics

  • 4.4M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 31.26

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 19

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 1.65

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.70

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Between the World and Me
race discrimination, African Americans, African Americans--Social conditions
Between the World and Me is a 2015 nonfiction book written by American author Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by Spiegel & Grau. It is written as a letter to the author's teenage son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States. Coates recapitulates American history and explains to his son the "racist violence that has been woven into American culture." Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore, detailing the ways in which institutions like the school, the police, and even "the streets" discipline, endanger, and threaten to disembody black men and women. The work takes structural and thematic inspiration from James Baldwin's 1963 epistolary book The Fire Next Time. Unlike Baldwin, Coates sees white supremacy as an indestructible force, one that Black Americans will never evade or erase, but will always struggle against. The novelist Toni Morrison wrote that Coates filled an intellectual gap in succession to James Baldwin. Editors of The New York Times and The New Yorker described the book as exceptional. The book won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
2015
The Water Dancer
American literature, Slaves, fiction, Southern states, fiction
2019
The Beautiful Struggle
Fathers and sons, Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction
An exceptional father-son story about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us.Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence--and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack--and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free. Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their father's steadfast efforts--assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled present--to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction. With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his father's generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond.
2001
We Were Eight Years in Power
Politics and government, Race relations, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
In these "urgently relevant essays," the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me "reflects on race, Barack Obama's presidency and its jarring aftermath"*--including the election of Donald Trump
2017
Nation under Our Feet
Comics & graphic novels, science fiction, Children's fiction
2016
50 Essays -- sixth edition
American essays, English essays, College readers
2016

Page views of Ta-Nehisi Coates by language

Over the past year Ta-Nehisi Coates has had the most page views in the with 280,784 views, followed by French (12,303), and German (7,025). In terms of yearly growth of page views the top 3 wikpedia editions are Hebrew (6,733.33%), Bulgarian (772.17%), and Simple English (321.20%)

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Ta-Nehisi Coates ranks 7,156 out of 7,302. Before him are Edward Kitsis, James Frey, Mohsin Hamid, Espido Freire, Shehan Karunatilaka, and Chetan Bhagat. After him are Owen Gleiberman, Hitomi Kanehara, Meena Alexander, Judith Wright, Chris Abani, and J. G. Quintel.

Most Popular Writers in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1975, Ta-Nehisi Coates ranks 855. Before him are Shehan Karunatilaka, Petria Thomas, Sutton Foster, Árni Gautur Arason, Ha Tae-kwon, and Katrin Rutschow-Stomporowski. After him are Craig Thompson, Craig Moore, Brian J. White, Coby Bell, Roger Craig Smith, and Cliff Bleszinski.

Others Born in 1975

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Ta-Nehisi Coates ranks 17,271 out of 20,380. Before him are Kris Allen (1985), Luke Bryan (1976), Vivienne Medrano (1992), Gerald Henderson (1956), Martin Shkreli (1983), and Susan Dunklee (1986). After him are Spencer Dinwiddie (1993), Craig Thompson (1975), Bailey Chase (1972), Cody Kasch (1987), Evan Taubenfeld (1983), and Darren Barnet (1991).

Others born in United States

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Among WRITERS In United States

Among writers born in United States, Ta-Nehisi Coates ranks 1,165. Before him are Vince Flynn (1966), Ottessa Moshfegh (1981), Pamela Geller (1958), Elizabeth Edwards (1949), Edward Kitsis (1971), and James Frey (1969). After him are J. G. Quintel (1982), Jane Espenson (1964), Kristin Cashore (1976), Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967), Stephen Glass (1972), and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (1973).

American born Writers

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