'Between the World and Me' by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a poignant and eye-opening exploration of what it means to be Black in America. Through a series of letters addressed to his teenage son, Coates delves into the experiences, fears, and frustrations of navigating a society plagued by systemic racism and inequality. The book exposes the harsh realities faced by Black individuals, while also offering insights into the legacy of slavery and the ongoing struggles for justice and equality.
Coates's writing style is described as powerful, raw, and emotional, with a stream of consciousness outpouring that provides a deep and thought-provoking look into the Black experience in the United States. The author's ability to blend personal anecdotes with societal critiques creates a compelling narrative that challenges readers to confront their own privilege, biases, and misconceptions about race and identity.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings include themes of racism, police violence, historical oppression, and discussions of trauma.
From The Publisher:
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.
#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 MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN
NAMED ONE OF PASTE'S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review
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Ratings (32)
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Reader Stats (55):
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5 comment(s)
Engaging and very relevant in today's time, this book should be required reading to better understand the plight of black people.
This is not milk, it is meat.
This is a short book, less than two hundred pages, but it is so powerful and important. It doesn't need to be any longer, although I would be interested to hear more of Coates' thoughts on certain topics.
Coates emphasizes the importance of the black body in America. Again and again, Coates returns to the action of racism on the black body: being shot by a cop takes away your body, being raped takes your body, and of course being a slave, the root of African-American history, takes your body away from you. Coates presents racism as a threat to the black body, and as a woman, I can relate. I am white and I can't claim to know where he's coming from. (Or rather, I "call myself" white, as Coates would say.) But my female body is also under threat from this patriarchal society, and having that fear mirrored at me from a slightly different angle is alarming and powerful.
His prose is musical and poetic, at times as powerful as Langston Hughes. The fact that this book is presented as a letter to Coates' son brings home the idea that "the personal is political." Politics act on people, on their bodies, and privilege allows some of us to forget that.
This is a book not just to read, but to keep and read over and over, to remind yourself to keep examining your privilege, asking questions, and then asking more.
Easy-to-read and eye-opening book regarding the history of race and "whiteness" in the US.
No es el primer libro que leo sobre el tema pero sí es el primero que realmente me llega.
Otros libros mostraban las estadisticas y me hacian entender el problema intelectualmente pero este es el primer libro que me hace entender el problema como parte de un todo del que yo tambien formo parte.
Y cual es el problema? El que en el mundo haya oprimidos y opresores y que ahora y desde hace 100s de años los oprimidos en estados unidos tienden a tener ciertas caracteristicas fisicas, por ejemplo la piel de colores mas oscuros.
Me gusta especialmente algunas de sus frases como " el sueño de la gente que cree que es blanca" porque es verdad, siempre me ha hecho gracia lo de ser "blanco", por poco que te de el sol, nadie es realmente blanco.
Bueno, sin alargarme mas, este ensayo muestra como es la vida en EEUU para los oprimidos, especificamente la vida de la gente a la que se le ha encasillado como "raza negra".
What can you read after
Between the World and Me?
About the Author:
Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years In Power and Between The World And Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
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