We Were Eight Years in Power
E119517
We Were Eight Years in Power is a collection of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essays reflecting on the Obama presidency, race, and American history, drawn largely from his work in The Atlantic.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| We Were Eight Years in Power canonical | 3 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T994697 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: We Were Eight Years in Power Context triple: [Ta-Nehisi Coates, notableWork, We Were Eight Years in Power]
-
A.
Between the World and Me
"Between the World and Me" is a critically acclaimed nonfiction book by Ta-Nehisi Coates that reflects on race, identity, and the Black experience in America through a personal letter to his son.
-
B.
The Beautiful Struggle
The Beautiful Struggle is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s coming-of-age memoir about growing up in Baltimore amid violence, hip-hop culture, and his father’s Black nationalist ideals.
-
C.
I Am Not Your Negro
I Am Not Your Negro is a 2016 documentary film that uses James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript and archival footage to examine the history of racism in the United States through his reflections on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
-
D.
Black America Again
Black America Again is a socially conscious hip-hop album by Common that addresses systemic racism, black identity, and political resistance in contemporary America.
-
E.
Voices of Freedom
Voices of Freedom is a collection of antislavery poems by John Greenleaf Whittier that powerfully advocated for the abolitionist cause in 19th-century America.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: We Were Eight Years in Power Target entity description: We Were Eight Years in Power is a collection of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essays reflecting on the Obama presidency, race, and American history, drawn largely from his work in The Atlantic.
-
A.
Between the World and Me
"Between the World and Me" is a critically acclaimed nonfiction book by Ta-Nehisi Coates that reflects on race, identity, and the Black experience in America through a personal letter to his son.
-
B.
The Beautiful Struggle
The Beautiful Struggle is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s coming-of-age memoir about growing up in Baltimore amid violence, hip-hop culture, and his father’s Black nationalist ideals.
-
C.
I Am Not Your Negro
I Am Not Your Negro is a 2016 documentary film that uses James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript and archival footage to examine the history of racism in the United States through his reflections on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
-
D.
Black America Again
Black America Again is a socially conscious hip-hop album by Common that addresses systemic racism, black identity, and political resistance in contemporary America.
-
E.
Voices of Freedom
Voices of Freedom is a collection of antislavery poems by John Greenleaf Whittier that powerfully advocated for the abolitionist cause in 19th-century America.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (47)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
essay collection
ⓘ
non-fiction book ⓘ |
| author | Ta-Nehisi Coates ⓘ |
| basedOn | essays originally published in The Atlantic ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| criticalReception | widely acclaimed ⓘ |
| exploresTheme |
Reconstruction and its rollback
ⓘ
continuity between Reconstruction and the Obama era ⓘ economic inequality ⓘ mass incarceration ⓘ political backlash to Black progress ⓘ structural racism ⓘ |
| genre |
African-American studies
ⓘ
essays ⓘ political non-fiction ⓘ |
| hasISBN | 9780399590566 ⓘ |
| hasPart |
American Girl
ⓘ
surface form:
“American Girl”
“Fear of a Black President” ⓘ “My President Was Black” ⓘ “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration” ⓘ “The Case for Reparations” ⓘ “The First White President” ⓘ “This Is How We Lost to the White Man” ⓘ “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?” ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| literaryStyle |
journalistic essay
ⓘ
memoiristic reflection ⓘ |
| mainSubject |
African-American experience
ⓘ
American history ⓘ Barack Obama presidency ⓘ race in the United States ⓘ white supremacy in America ⓘ |
| mediaType |
audiobook
ⓘ
ebook ⓘ print ⓘ |
| narrativePerspective | first-person ⓘ |
| notablePublication | New York Times bestseller ⓘ |
| numberOfEssays | 8 ⓘ |
| pageCount | ~400 ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 2017 ⓘ |
| publisher |
One World
ⓘ
Penguin Random House ⓘ
surface form:
Random House
|
| structure | each essay preceded by a new reflective introduction ⓘ |
| timePeriodCovered |
Obama presidency
ⓘ
post–Civil War Reconstruction (as historical comparison) ⓘ |
| titleOrigin | phrase used by Reconstruction-era Black politicians in South Carolina ⓘ |
| titleRefersTo | the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: We Were Eight Years in Power Description of subject: We Were Eight Years in Power is a collection of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essays reflecting on the Obama presidency, race, and American history, drawn largely from his work in The Atlantic.
Referenced by (3)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
subject surface form:
Ta-Nehisi Coates