Between the World and Me: Notes on the First 150 Years in America

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT

Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone)

NAMED ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, People, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, New York, Newsday, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly

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.

• ISBN10: 0812993543
• ISBN13: 9780812993547
• Publish Date: 14 July 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Random House Inc
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 176
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780812993547

Reviews

[clq]

I went into Between the World and Me completely blind. I hadn’t heard about this book until a podcast, Aftenpodden, mentioned that they’d be doing a discussion around this book on an upcoming episode, so I read it to be able to follow along with the discussion.

This book is very different from the, too few, other books I’ve read on race in America. There is no call to action, no pleas about what should change, and no suggestions as to how the world could be better. It doesn’t try to judge the state of things, it just lays out the reality of what it has been like for the author to grow up, and live, in a society where the colour of his skin has been, and always will be, a barrier between the world and himself. It’s a description of a grim reality that’s made all the more devastating by the fact that the book is written as a letter to the son of the author, to prepare him for the apparent inevitabilities of growing up in a world where the colour of his skin will always create a barrier between him and the world he lives in.

That’s the thing about eye-opening books: once they open your eyes, if only a bit, you might not like what you see, and a lot of this book makes for very uncomfortable reading. That’s compounded by my personal discomfort around how I’ve only started seeking out and listening to voices like this now.

I’ve heard some criticism of the hopelessness in the tone of this book, which for me is nether here nor there. What matters to me is the perspective that I, as a white person, can only ever get through listening to or reading about the experiences and realities that are described in books like this. I’m finishing off this review three weeks after having read the book, and more than any other book on racial issues I’ve read, this is the one that has popped into my mind literally every time I’ve seen a news story about police violence against black people. That reaction probably says more about the book, and why I think it’s important, than anything I could write down.

[moraa]

I really enjoyed this one.
Everyone should absolutely read it.

[gmcgregor]

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a writer that I find challenging. He's incredibly talented and smart, but he pushes back against the way I'm inclined to view the world left to my own devices. Which are, of course, rooted in my own experience. It's easy to forget that the way you see and interact with the world (and the way it sees and interacts with you) isn't universal. Which is why I was really excited when my book club chose as a selection Coates' lauded Between The World And Me. It's a book I'd been meaning to read and that I was glad I had an excuse to force it upwards on my reading list.

Coates structures the book as a pair of letters addressed to his son. Part memoir and part social commentary, Coates relates his experiences growing up as a black man in America, filtered through the lens of trying to impart the lessons that his son will need to stay safe. Between The World And Me focuses intensely on the body, and the ways that the bodies of black people have been used to fuel the American Dream for white people. It's a startling thing to read about in writing as powerful as Coates' is: what it must feel like to always feel like your body is at the risk of being broken.

As a relatively attractive woman, I'm familiar with the feeling of a body that doesn't quite belong to me alone, that others (and by that, I mean men) feel like belongs to them in a particular way. But it's use, rather than breaking, that's usually at issue there. Coates makes the feeling of constantly knowing that your body, and the bodies of those that you love, are targets for violence and rage simply for existing, visceral and real. Coates' love of and fear for his son, his desperate desire to somehow protect him from a world that will see him as a threat simply by virtue of his existence as a black man, is palpable.

This book has become a must-read for white liberals who want to learn more about race relations, a group into which I myself fall. I read an article before I read the book where Coates himself addressed the way his book has been received and expressed some frustration about being constantly asked about how he feels about the way white people have reacted to it. He wrote the book after a friend was murdered by the police, but the conversation hasn't been about police brutality. It's been about how to help white people better understand race. That should be a wake-up call, fellow Caucasians. It's not the job of people of color to make it easier for us to understand what they go through, especially when there is plenty of literature, like this book, that will help us to that work on our own.

Powerful. So intense that I had to set the book aside so I could process what I just read and take a moment to collect myself. Accessible, intelligent, passionate, heart wrenching writing. This book really opened my eyes and I'd recommend it to everyone.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Between the World and Me is a collection of essays that Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote to his son. In this collection, Coates reflects on the state of the world and the history in America over the last 150 years. Covering the history and his own personal story of growing up as an African American and attempting to answer some of the questions that his adolescent son might have about the world.

I have always struggled to review a collection of essays and Between the World and Me is no different. What can I say about this book that Ta-Nehisi Coates has not said already, apart from the fact that this is an impressive collection and very informative? Ta-Nehisi Coates is an elegant writer and I found so much beauty in the words, despite the fact that it was a very unsettling subject matter.

One thing that really stood out to me, is the fact Ta-Nehisi Coates offered no answers, no solutions and no hope. He comes across as feeling hopeless in the situation; like racism is never going to end. While this focuses on racism in America, it still manages to get the reader thinking about the topic in their own country. I buddy-read this book with Hanaa from Craving Books who is a Canadian, so we both were not American but still got a lot from the book.

This is an important book and while there are no answers to be found in Between the World and Me, I think just reading this will be a good start. Understanding is an important part of change, and if we can somehow get everyone understanding just how bad the situation, we might get change. Ta-Nehisi Coates really knows how to write and I find myself wanting to read more of his books; I know he has written a memoir called The Beautiful Struggle. I hope he continues to write, and I would love to see him try fiction, but until then everyone should read Between the World and Me.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/non-fiction/between-the-world-and-me-by-ta-nehisi-coates/