Google Zeitgeist | Ta-Nehisi Coates on Names "That Erase Everything About You" in "The Water Dancer" | Google Zeitgeist @GoogleZeitgeist | Uploaded February 2020 | Updated October 2024, 10 hours ago.
Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks on the legacy of names that replace people's identities with the cruel actions done to them in relation to his new book, "The Water Dancer." Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years In Power and Between The World And Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
Watch the full talk: youtu.be/mjUEIuxWn90
Watch more talks from Zeitgeist 2019: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJhC0rY-YEDxX_cnUPY_A3mLgYleVV7OX
Google Zeitgeist is a collection of talks by people who are changing the world. Hear entrepreneurs, CEOs, storytellers, scientists, and dreamers share their visions of how we can shape tomorrow.
"The Water Dancer" Synopsis:
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.
So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.
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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks on the legacy of names that replace people's identities with the cruel actions done to them in relation to his new book, "The Water Dancer." Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years In Power and Between The World And Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
Watch the full talk: youtu.be/mjUEIuxWn90
Watch more talks from Zeitgeist 2019: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJhC0rY-YEDxX_cnUPY_A3mLgYleVV7OX
Google Zeitgeist is a collection of talks by people who are changing the world. Hear entrepreneurs, CEOs, storytellers, scientists, and dreamers share their visions of how we can shape tomorrow.
"The Water Dancer" Synopsis:
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.
So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.
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.
