Between the World and Me

Coates’s semi-autobiographical examination of life for black men in American society, and more broadly in American history, is an education. Like Zinn, Coates calls America on the hypocrisy inherent in its highest ideals and its most cherished conceits.

As Coates himself later said about Zinn, "He knocked me on my ass." The two - while not always on the same page in their critical examinations of the American experiment, are clearly kindred spirits. They both want America to do better and clearly believe it can do better if it is honest about itself - but will it be? This is… show more.

Without having read Between The World And Me, I would have never written my own book. I taught Ta-Nehisi Coates’s son, Samori, in middle school, which made reading this book even more impactful. Between The World And Me is just as much about challenging systemic racism and being the change one wishes to see, as it is about the profound love that exists between parent and child. Becoming a parent is one of the most transformative experiences one can have and in Between The World And Me, Coates’s love for his son, and his desire for his son to… show more.

Coates’ memoir, written in the form of a letter to his 14-year-old son, was his response to the 2000 death of his former Howard University classmate, killed by an undercover police officer in a case of mistaken identity. Coates grounds this story in deep research that explores the presumption of Black criminality woven through our history – in laws against aiding fugitive slaves, in slave codes that made it a crime to learn to read, in white terrorism that disenfranchised black people. I’ve admired Coates since I discovered his 2014 Atlantic article, “The Case for Reparations.” His message is devastating.… show more.

This autobiographical award-winning book makes clear that a constitutional end to segregation does not mean it ends in practice. This is an angry, fatalistic view of race relations in 2015 America. The book is presented as a cautionary letter of advice to the author’s son on how to attain and keep self-esteem in a dangerous world where ultimate authority is determined by “white” identity. Coates uses “body” as meaning person or self. He draws a line in African American history from the tobacco fields of seventeenth-century Virginia to the lethal ghetto streets of today and to the police violence against… show more.

Not since James Baldwin, then Toni Morrison does anyone write more intelligently about the struggles of Black families in America. In this letter to his son, Coates explores the painful truth about becoming a Black man in America. “They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people.”