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The second chapter follows Coates on a trip to Dakar, the capital of Senegal in West Africa. Coates reflects on his childhood. He recalls how his father collected “revolutionary art” and packaging that featured Black people (including Wheaties cereal boxes, potato chip bags). Coates’s mother sends him a picture of a portrait she had drawn from about 1978. The portrait is of his father, reading. The portrait was captioned by a then-child Coates, “Daddy says he reads to learn.” Coates states that his father accepted that the “revolution will not be televised, because the revolution will not be happening at all.” Coates thinks about how hard his father worked to pay the rent in a world of economic and social disparity between racial groups. Coates states that he believes that written works that either dismiss or support this disparity are the “syllabus” of white supremacy. 

Coates then discusses the 19th-century anthropologist and epidemiologist Josiah Nott. Nott was determined to prove that Africans were inferior to Europeans “and thus fit for enslavement.” Coates states that people who obtain a position of power through violence often spend time trying to justify it: “a story must be told, one that raises a wall between themselves and those they seek to throttle and rob.” Nott even traveled to Africa to research his fallacious theories. When Nott was confronted with the wonders of ancient Egypt, he wrote a treatise that attempted to separate the accomplishments of Ancient Egypt from those of Black Africans.  

Coates discusses the origin of his first name, “Ta-Nehisi,” and its origins as Ancient Egyptian. Coates says that such names were a reprisal of the oppressed, an attempt to embrace African history, to venerate African kingdoms as an attempt to offer a different narrative to the one being imposed upon them. Coates states that he never felt that his name fit very well, since it was both an artifact of the ancient world and an expression of hope for a world that had not yet arrived. Coates reflects on the tradition of idolizing a Black civilization (a kingdom with a hierarchy) and how it mirrors the establishment it fights against. He states that he believes human dignity is found in the mind and body. With all these thoughts, he feels obligated to visit Africa, to “go home.” 

Coates thinks about the portrait of his father as he flies to Dakar. He describes feeling a mixture of “joy, dread, and hope” as his flight arrives. On the car ride to Dakar, he sees battered pieces of gym equipment along the beach. Assuming that the equipment is part of a public works project that failed, Coates is plagued with worries that how such a failure—evidence of a collective African failure—could be interpreted as support for the spurious ideas that Nott and other espoused. Once he arrives at the hotel, Coates goes down to the water and recalls a time when he was in Maryland, staring across the Atlantic Ocean from its other side. He describes feeling a deep sadness and states that he has returned home, but ghosts have traveled with him. He then travels into the city and engages in tourist activities, visiting shops and being overwhelmed by the movement of the city. At lunchtime, he decides to push through his anxiety and eat at an establishment for locals instead of one that caters to tourists. He feels rewarded for his effort. 

In the evening, on his ride back to the hotel, Coates sees many people working out using the equipment on the beach that he had assumed was abandoned as well as people playing soccer and basketball. Coates realizes that he had brought the notions of abandonment with him. He joins a friend for a quiet dinner at a small restaurant and feels relief. He thinks about all the generations between his ancestors, who were taken to America, and himself. He feels as though part of him has come home. He thinks about the metaphor of a forest, and how he needs to walk the land to catch all of the details. Coates states that the individual, personal view of all the imperfections allows one to add colors and shapes to an otherwise gray, square world. He also reflects that it helps people recognize elements in themselves.  

Coates discusses the notion that many Black Americans have, that the people of Senegal are very physically attractive. He finds that he agrees and that “the tone of it betrays a deep insecurity, a shock that the deepest and blackest part of us is really beautiful.” He thinks about the images that Black Americans have been given and the attempts to make them feel inferior. He references Pauline, a character from Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye. Pauline feels ugly because she does not look like the white blonde actress Jean Harlow. 

The next night, Coates spends time with two Senegalese friends, Hamidou and Khanata, and discusses the contrast of cultural views of race between America and Africa. He jokes that Africans have never lived under the “one-drop rule.” He finds that the African view of race can be rather complex. LeBron James is straightforwardly Black. Steph Curry, light-skinned despite having two Black parents, would normally be considered mixed, but because he plays professional basketball, he is considered Black as well. Coates is surprised and finds it amusing to have the social constructs of race “so dispassionately preached back at me.” Hamidou and Khanata also tell Coates that features of mixed-race people are coveted in Senegal. People often straighten their hair or lighten their skin. He reflects that valuing lighter skin was commonplace among Black Americans as well. 

The next day, Coates travels to Gorée Island. By reputation, the island was known as the “Door of No Return” for enslaved people, but Coates acknowledges that most enslaved people did not pass through Gorée Island. As he approaches the island, he realizes he is on a pilgrimage of sorts. “I was a pilgrim on an ancestral journey, back to the beginning of time, not just to my own birth but to the birth of the modern world.” He wanders about the island and meditates on the suffering it holds, historically. On his return to the mainland, he is overcome with emotion. Coates thinks back to his father and the poets, writers, and journalists who influenced him. He decides that people have a right to imagined places and traditions and that they become more powerful when people accept that they are imagined. 

At the end of the trip, Hamidou and Khanata organize a get-together of writers and activists. Coates feels a kinship with the activists and writers, even though their struggles are different from his own. He states that he knows the effects of slavery and Jim Crow, while they know the effects of conquest and colonialism. During a group discussion, a young woman states that she is a graduate student at a university in Dakar and that she is working on a dissertation about Coates’s books. Coates states that while he is among family and has come home, his “writing had gotten here first.”

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