{
  "type": "author",
  "site": {
    "name": "Leafy Quotes",
    "language": "en",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com"
  },
  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "name": "Ta-Nehisi Coates",
  "slug": "ta-nehisi-coates",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates.json",
  "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates.md",
  "image": null,
  "quotes_count": 6,
  "books": [
    {
      "title": "The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir",
      "slug": "the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir",
      "quotes_count": 4,
      "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/verso-books/ta-nehisi-coates/the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir_978-17-8478-534-5.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Water Dancer",
      "slug": "the-water-dancer",
      "quotes_count": 2,
      "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/one-world/ta-nehisi-coates/the-water-dancer_978-03-9959-061-0.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-water-dancer"
    }
  ],
  "recent_quotes": [
    {
      "id": "939c58bd-c6a1-4e97-bade-96057b3371d2",
      "slug": "we-feared-rylands",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-water-dancer/we-feared-rylands",
      "text": "We feared [Ryland's Hounds] and hated them, perhaps more than we feared and hated the Quality who held us, for all of us were low, we were all Tasked, and we should be in union and arrayed against the Quality, if only the low whites would wager their crumbs for a slice of the whole cake. (p. 57)",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "slavery",
          "slug": "slavery",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/slavery"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ta-Nehisi_Coates#The_Water_Dancer_(2019)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:51"
    },
    {
      "id": "8e5ea410-1416-4ff4-8417-2cebf3acecec",
      "slug": "a-white-person",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-water-dancer/a-white-person",
      "text": "[A white person] was among the most fanatical agents I ever encountered on the Underground. All of these fanatics were white. They took slavery as a personal insult or affront, a stain upon their name. They had seen women carried off to fancy, or watched as a father was stripped and beaten in front of his child, or seen whole families pinned like hogs into rail-cars, steam-boats, and jails. Slavery humiliated them, because it offended a basic sense of goodness that they believed themselves to possess. And when their cousins perpetrated the base practice, it served to remind them how easily they might do the same. They scorned their barbaric brethren, but they were brethren all the same. So their opposition was a kind of vanity, a hatred of slavery that far outranked any love of the slave.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "slavery",
          "slug": "slavery",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/slavery"
        },
        {
          "name": "vanity",
          "slug": "vanity",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/vanity"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ta-Nehisi_Coates#The_Water_Dancer_(2019)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:51"
    },
    {
      "id": "ee638015-4373-47ec-a03a-514f1083814d",
      "slug": "i-was-young",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir/i-was-young",
      "text": "I was young and could not see the weaponry my ancestors had left for me, the shield in the tall brown grass, the ax lying right next to the tree.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 41,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "family",
          "slug": "family",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/family"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ta-Nehisi_Coates#The_Beautiful_Struggle:_A_Memoir_(2008)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:50"
    },
    {
      "id": "6930f2ee-c22f-4864-a4a8-b7cd6ed101bb",
      "slug": "there-was-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir/there-was-the",
      "text": "There was the normal high that comes from the hormones of youth, that fresh sense of being unchained. But also there was the omnipresent feeling that It could go down. In those moments—which back then were all of our moments—your neurology was always code red.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 34,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "fear",
          "slug": "fear",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/fear"
        },
        {
          "name": "youth",
          "slug": "youth",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/youth"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ta-Nehisi_Coates#The_Beautiful_Struggle:_A_Memoir_(2008)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:50"
    },
    {
      "id": "5297ce28-1980-4983-a7e4-beaa60515e81",
      "slug": "that-was-how",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir/that-was-how",
      "text": "That was how I came to understand, how I came to know why all these brothers wrote and talked so big. Even the Knowledged feared the streets. But the rhyme pad was a spell book—it summoned asphalt elementals, elder gods, and weeping ancestors, all of whom had your back. That summer, I knew what Fruitie was trying to say, that when under the aegis of , you never lived alone, you never walked alone.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 111,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "music",
          "slug": "music",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/music"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ta-Nehisi_Coates#The_Beautiful_Struggle:_A_Memoir_(2008)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:50"
    },
    {
      "id": "262d5b28-d591-4a03-b1a7-d8221b2d71e2",
      "slug": "in-dad-found",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ta-nehisi-coates/the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir/in-dad-found",
      "text": "In , Dad found a literature of himself. He'd read and , but from Wright he learned that there was an entire shadow canon, a tradition of writers who grabbed the pen, not out of leisure but to break the chain.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 72,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "writing",
          "slug": "writing",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing"
        },
        {
          "name": "literature",
          "slug": "literature",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ta-Nehisi_Coates#The_Beautiful_Struggle:_A_Memoir_(2008)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:50"
    }
  ]
}