…maybe I could go from the haunted to the ghost, from reader to writer, and I too could have the stars, and their undeniable gravity, at my disposal.

In the beginning of the first chapter, before analyzing a quote from Frederick Douglass, Coates states his initial desire to be a writer. From an early age he is affected by different forms of writing and eventually becomes quite influenced by Shakespeare. In this quote he talks about being haunted by something he has read (it persists in his mind) and that he wants to become the ghost—to haunt those that read what he writes. He desires the same power that writers have had in his life.

I am thinking of young writers everywhere whose task is nothing less than doing their part to save the world.

At the end of the first chapter, Coates returns to addressing the reader as part of a writing class. This concept comes up in several locations throughout the book. Coates argues that writing, especially writing with authenticity, has the power to fight against violence and oppression. Oppressors often use violence, since they have more finances to purchase weapons and soldiers, but wealth does not necessarily generate good writers. Coates argues that writers who have faced adversity have more wisdom and thus will be better writers, and it is their responsibility to effect positive change in the world.

We have a right to our imagined traditions, to our imagined places, and those traditions and places are most powerful when we confess that they are imagined.

Near the end of the second chapter, Coates discusses his trip to Gorée Island. While it has the Door of No Return, the last stop for slaves before crossing the Atlantic, Coates acknowledges that only a small percentage of slaves actually traveled through Gorée Island. He accepts that it has become almost mythical in nature, but notes that the concept is still important. Admitting that the site was not as pivotal does not make the site less important or significant as a symbol.

…the great privilege of great power is an incuriosity about those who lack it.

In the first half of the third chapter, Coates describes different writers that had racist views. Here he discusses the nature of oppressors (and generally anyone in power) and how they are often indifferent or ignorant to those that they oppress. He describes it as a privilege that a ruler or oppressor does not need to learn about the people being subjugated as they often are seen as insubstantial.

Sometimes, you are blessed with a moment where all the dissembling, all the shame, all the politesse are stripped, and evil speaks with clarity.

In the middle of the fourth chapter, Coates describes a moment where one can see something as terrible without any distraction. He compares the Confederate flag, which flew over the State House in South Carolina until 2015, to a park in Israel that honors Jewish extremists who killed Palestinians while they were at prayer. Coates recommends that people should accept the clarity of such evil to better understand it.

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