Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
eBook
(Text Publishing, July 16, 2015)
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 Coatesā 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 liberationāa 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. āCoates 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.ā Kirkus Reviews āIāve 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 Coatesā 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.ā Toni Morrison āExtraordinaryā¦Ta-Nehisi Coatesā¦writes an impassioned letter to his teenage sonāa letter both loving and full of a parentās dreadācounselling him on the history of American violence against the black body, the young African-Americanās extreme vulnerability to wrongful arrest, police violence, and disproportionate incarceration.ā David Remnick, New Yorker āA searing meditation on what it means to be black in America todayā¦as compelling a portrait of a fatherāson relationship as Martin Amisās Experience or Geoffrey Wolffās The Duke of Deception.ā New York Times āCoates possesses a profoundly empathetic imagination and a tough intellect...Coates speaks to America, but Australia has reason to listen.ā Monthly āHeartbreaking, 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.ā Capital āIn our current global landscape itās an essential perspective, regardless of your standpoint.ā Paperboy āImpactful and poignant.ā Reading With Jenna