Between the world and me

No cover — Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the world and me (2016, Thorndike Press)

337 pages

English language

Published 2016 by Thorndike Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-4104-8584-7
OCLC Number:: 921240451

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a 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 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 …

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a 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 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.

18 editions

Ben Waber reviewed Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

A Powerful, Personal, and Challenging Mix of Autobiography and Philosophy

5 stars

Framed as a conversation between Coates and his son, this part autobiography, part history, part philosophical reflection on American history and the centrality of racism and Black oppression is a truly unique book. It's deeply intimate, using those personal experiences to illustrate fundamental truths about being Black in America. The one very minor outlier were the sections on Paris that paint a naively rosy picture - it's arguably the most segregated city in the world. As an aside, Howard University should send this book to all prospective applicants, since after reading the book I'm now convinced that I need to recommend it to everyone. Highly recommend