Ta-Nehisi Coates did it again last week. In a practice part prose and part alchemy, he distilled a series of “dragon energy” tweets and a 1980s moonwalk into a complex brew of racial reflection, cultural critique, searing memoir, and political analysis. Reading his “I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye,” I found myself pausing intermittently and turning each sentence over until its layers of meaning and weight came undone. Similar to the way I’d felt reading Between the World and Me and “The First White President.” Every turn of phrase is a reminder of the writer’s genius, of his capacity to find just the right words for a world that resists any form of emotional translation.