Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Context

For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him -- most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear. What were they afraid of? Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings -- moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago's South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America's 'long war on black people,' or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police. In his trademark style -- a mix of lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, essayistic argument, and reportage -- Coates provides readers a thrillingly illuminating new framework for understanding race.

The Plot

Between the World and Me is a letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s fifteen-year-old son, Samori. He weaves his personal, historical, and intellectual development into his ruminations on how to live in a black body in America.

Coates writes of his upbringing in the ghettos of Baltimore in which he learned the codes of the street in order to survive but never fully embraced them. His father was hard on him, but Coates now sees that black parents often are so they do not lose their children. To grow up black in Baltimore was usually to grow up poor, marginalized, and desperate to assert one’s humanity. The swagger and loudness of the men on the corners was their way to protect themselves and to announce their presence as human beings.

Coates speaks to his son directly about the perils of being a young black boy – of having to be “twice as good” and to take responsibility for the actions of other black people, of having to know and follow “the rules,” of having to struggle more than everyone else. He knows his son has grown up differently than he did and their experiences of being black are different, but the stark reality remains that inhabiting a black body in America is fraught with peril. It pains him that he cannot help his son or make it okay; it is profoundly frustrating to always be the “below” of one’s country, to always have to try harder.

Final Thoughts

I love how thought provoking this book was, however, i found it long to read and did not engage me as i thought that it would. I found this book hard to read…maybe because i don’t understand the depths of the american system.

Have you read this book? How did you find it? Any recommendations?

Speak soon!

Yasmin