The work takes structural and thematic inspiration from James Baldwin's 1963 epistolary book The Fire Next Time. Coates recapitulates American history and explains to his son the 'racist violence that has been woven into American culture.' Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore, detailing the ways in which institutions like the school, the police, and even 'the streets' discipline, endanger, and threaten to disembody black men and women. It is written as a letter to the author's teenage son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States. Nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-nonfiction=,īetween the World and Me is a 2015 nonfiction book written by American author Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by Spiegel & Grau. Umschulungswerkstätten für Siedler und Auswanderer,

SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination & Race Relations, 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.īIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, 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. 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?īetween the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.

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. 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.

Between the world and me book