Ta-Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me

Winner, Kirkus Prize for Non-Fiction, 2015 In the 150 years since the end of the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the story of race and America has remained a brutally simple one, written on flesh: it is the story of the black body, exploited to create the country's foundational wealth, violently segregated to unite a nation after a civil war, and, today, still disproportionately threatened, locked up and killed in the streets. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can America reckon with its fraught racial history? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer those questions, presented in the form of a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son the story of his own awakening to the truth about history and race through a series of revelatory experiences: immersion in nationalist mythology as a child; engagement with history, poetry and love at Howard University; travels to Civil War battlefields and the South Side of Chicago; a journey to France that reorients his sense of the world; and pilgrimages to the homes of mothers whose children's lives have been taken as American plunder. Taken together, these stories map a winding path towards a kind of liberation—a journey from fear and confusion, to a full and honest understanding of the world as it is. Masterfully woven from lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me offers a powerful new framework for understanding America's history and current crisis, and a transcendent vision for a way forward. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for the Atlantic and the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. Coates has received the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, and the George Polk Award for his Atlantic cover story 'The Case for Reparations'. He lives in New York with his wife and son. ‘Coates offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son's life...this moving, potent testament might have been titled Black Lives Matter.’ Kirkus Reviews ‘I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates’ journey, is visceral, eloquent and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is required reading.’ Toni Morrison ‘Extraordinary...Ta-Nehisi Coates...writes an impassioned letter to his teenage son—a letter both loving and full of a parent’s dread—counselling him on the history of American violence against the black body, the young African-American’s extreme vulnerability to wrongful arrest, police violence, and disproportionate incarceration.’ David Remnick, New Yorker ‘A searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today...as compelling a portrait of a father–son relationship as Martin Amis’s Experience or Geoffrey Wolff’s The Duke of Deception.’ New York Times ‘Coates possesses a profoundly empathetic imagination and a tough intellect...Coates speaks to America, but Australia has reason to listen.’ Monthly ‘Heartbreaking, confronting, it draws power from understatement in dealing with race in America and the endless wrong-headed concept that whites are somehow entitled to subjugate everyone else.’ Capital ‘In our current global landscape it’s an essential perspective, regardless of your standpoint.’ Paperboy

Celina Hoang Vo ♥︎

And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the mnemory of your ancestors. 

I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. 

It was the cotton that passed through our chained hands that inaugurated this age. 

The Earth is not our creation. It has no respect for us. It has no use for us. 

They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people. 

 I assumed that this would have been bard on her, but she was insulted by the assumption.

And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white.

Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value.

if there is any comfort in this, it is not the kind that I would encourage you to indulge.

. We will always be black, you and I, even if it means different things in differ- ent places. 

 And I am now ashamed of the thought, ashamed of my fear, of the generational chains I tried to clasp onto your wrists. 

. I think of your grandmother calling me and noting how you were growing tall and would one day try to "test me" And I said to her that I would regard that day, should it come, as the total failure of fatherhood be- cause if all I had over you were my hands, then I really had nothing at all. 

I am wounded. I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next. 

, and if I have not said it with the same direction and clarity, I confess that is because I am afraid. And I have no God to hold me up. 

 "You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you."

I did not want to raise you in fear or false memnory. I did not want you forced to mask your joys and bind your eyes. What I wanted for you was to grow into consciousness. I resolved to hide nothing from you. 

 I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.

The people who must believe they are white can never be your measuring stick.

Patrick Book

Louisa

Pratik M

Unless you've been living under a literary rock, you've heard of or better still even read the works of Ta-Nehisi Coates. A journalist/writer for The Atlantic, his longform essays on race relations in today's turbulent times are the perfect recipe for those trying to sift through the jingoism. His profound understanding of African-American history is a revelation for someone who didn't grow up here. Heck, I'm sure people who were even born here are aware of much of the sordid history of race and how it permeates American society to this day.

This book is a long open letter to his teenage son who reads and sees the troubling news today and gets distressed. Coates doesn't sugarcoat his words on how 'his body' i.e. that of an African-American is not really in his control and is subject to abuse not by a racist cop but rather by institutions that've thrived on subjugation of minorities and adds that history has been replete with such injustices. Perhaps we hear about them more often now than before thanks to the tech social networks. He doesn't proffer violence as the solution but his tone is of resigned anger that has festered over years thanks to countless incidences of being unfairly profiled. 

Coates talks about the other side of white privilege which any non-white person doesn't need any explaining. The norms that have been set that we constantly try to fight against are dictated by what is expected of you. I cannot imagine what it is to be a black man or a Muslim in America as much as a white person can't imagine what's it be to a brown person trying to board an airplane just to get home.

Be warned that parts of the book will make you angry. Very angry. But it also instills you in a finer understanding of the world around you and all you can hope is to make it a slightly better place. As Obama often says, we strive to make it a more perfect union. But I don't think we're there yet. Far from it, in fact. But someday.

kelsey

Isabella 

A short, but powerful book. It's so sad to see the realities the author has to explain to his son. It's so raw, and thought-provoking. Definitely a must-read book.

Incredible and powerful words that helps us shape a generation of the evolution on what it means to hate and what does it look like from the eyes of those who are hated upon. Ta-Nehisi Coates personifies the struggle and beauty of African American oppression in a letter style prose that reminds one of spoken word or slam poetry and personally takes me back to when I used to read Walter Dean Myers and recognize this letter is telling the story of a people who were left with no choice but to be brave and go into this night. BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME. 

Daniel Marin

Pamela Koh

Ryan 

Gracie Marsden

Gorgeous prose on a subject of paramount importance. The audiobook by the author was astonishingly beautiful. Thought provoking and hauntingly beautiful.

Cece Page

Loved the content and topics of this book but the letter writing/ stream of consciousness format made it a little tough to follow in spots and sometimes felt haphazard and jumped around between ideas/stories a lot

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Source: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/220290/between-the-world-and-me-by-ta-nehisi-coates/9780147520500/

Laura Mauler

If you are seeing this message, read the book.

Lara Engle

altlovesbooks

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said here. It's a fantastic book, written by a fantastic man, about circumstances that shouldn't exist. I'm not the key demographic this book is aimed at, but I still walked away with something, even if that something is a vague sadness at how we ended up here at this point.

Not only is this book beautifully written, it eloquently depicts both the current and historical narrative of America. It reveals the American Dream for what it is: a justification of oppression.
The writing is deeply personal, and Coates’s vulnerability shows a level of authenticity that truly makes a difference.
Should be required reading

Cindy

Emma

An illuminating read that evokes a deeper understanding of what it means to be Black in America. Coates guides the reader to question the narratives of countries and cultures through autobiographical prose in an open letter to his son. Because of this framework, the books has a uniquely intimate tone which invites the reader into a new realm of understanding.

This is one of those books that I believe everyone benefits from reading. Between the World and Me serves as a reminder that there is a vision of the future worth fighting for, though it may not seem visible now. Ta-Nehisi Coates wields language so powerfully and effortlessly; all in his effort to prepare his son for the horrors of reality for those who have been labeled with and negatively affected by the illusion of race.  

“But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.”

This is one of those books that I believe everyone benefits from reading. Between the World and Me serves as a reminder that there is a vision of the future worth fighting for, though it may not seem visible now. Ta-Nehisi Coates wields language so powerfully and effortlessly; all in his effort to prepare his son for the horrors of reality for those who have been labeled with and negatively affected by the illusion of race.  

“But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.”

The book starts of interesting but it is rather repetitive with the main ideas and concepts. 

Ksenija 

Matthew Royal

This book is a chronicle of the mental and emotional changes of a sensitive man living in a black body in America. It's at times poetic and honest about deep emotion, and though most of the time he's addressing his son, the author speaks to the silent observer who takes their white body for granted in the luxury of ignorance. He never uses the term "white privilege," and he's less accusing than James Baldwin, but he welcomes the reader into his head and to see with his eyes.

"I wanted you to see different people living by different rules."

Coates has a complicated relationship with the place that he grew up. He complains that he was in a fight for survival, keeping his body safe, and putting him at the very bottom rung of Maslowe's hierarchy of needs. However, he justifies the very system of violence that he abhors, he casts it as an act of defiant identity creation and protection for the people living in his community from outsiders. It's very complicated for him as he talks to his son. He wants the best for his son, and he doesn't want him "blinded by fear" when dealing with the rest of the world, but he still wants him to remember where he came from and the struggle of his people, who are they his people? Are they really a race? Race is a concept created by the oppressor, so it can't be that. The conflict of wanting to pass on your child a Heritage, but not the negative aspects of that heritage hold universal appeal.

His experience of feeling free from all of the racial baggage that he experienced every day in New York City is not uncommon among American people in Paris. The idea that learning French in school seems pointless because you don't know any French people to talk to transforms into realizing subjects like French are Bridges to other universes with a different culture, with an entirely different way of thinking, and an entirely different way of perceiving beauty.

anna near

Between the World and Me was searing and painful. In essays written to his son, Te-Nehisi Coates examines what it means to be Black and shows how slavery and racism still have an impact on society today in the United States. He describes his experiences as a child growing up in Baltimore in blunt, cynical, and devastating prose. As a white girl, to see the world and experiences from the perspective of a person of color was very invaluable to me. I read it one sitting as the writing was very continuous, and I found it impossible to put down. The author's honesty and vulnerability was so poignant- this is definitely a book that will stick with me for a long time.

Patrick Cartelli

An absolute must read. Take a day and read it straight through.

Midori Kobayashi

Like Toni Morrison very rightly said, this should be a MUST READ for every school. 
One of the most real accounts of how life is so different for white and black teenagers growing up. The stark contrast between their upbringing, their notion of a "good" childhood/teenage and their parent's beliefs is something I don't think we ever notice/think about otherwise. 



 But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.



This book sheds light to some very harsh truths about racism and people's mindset. You need to read this to get an idea about how privileged you are. And try doing better. 



Not being violent enough could cost me my body. Being too violent could cost me my body. We could not get out.



This book is not gonna be an easy read, you as a person of privilege will feel questioned. You will feel uncomfortable and that is exactly the point. To ask uneasy questions to talk about things people have been taken for granted and breaking the racial stereotypes. This is a book that will make you question your every move, belief, ideology. And make you think and rethink them for good.



The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.



Each and every line from this book is quotable, is so damn intriguing. Definitely gonna read everything else written by this author. MUST MUST MUST READ. ONE OF THE BEST NON-FICTION BOOKS I've read in forever.

Simao Freitas

Amazing, inspiring, raw, visceral, sad, beautiful. Couldn’t stop reading it.

Kristen Claiborn

Like many others in 2020, I have sought out books by African American authors, especially ones about their experiences. This one was particularly poignant because it was written as a "letter" to his son. This book is heart-wrenching and eye-opening; a must-read for anybody.

Between the World and Me

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