From the Bookshelf of Diversity in All Forms!…

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Start date: October 1, 2022

Finish date: October 31, 2022

Discussion: Monthly Group Reads

Why we're reading this: Diversity topic we cover in October is race/ethnicity

Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
[close] Diversity topic we cover in October is race/ethnicity

Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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What Members Thought

Aug 14, 2019 Jeanne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir-biography, african-african-american, read-2019, politics

Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me is a love letter of sorts to his teenaged son, Samori. It's not the sappy, Valentine sort of love letter that we've received many of, but the kind where you respect and love the other person so much that you want to share the most important parts of yourself with the other person. The kind that is invaluable because it is so rare.

I was deeply moved, not just because of the nature of the story – Coates talks about the way fear has been essential and nece Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me is a love letter of sorts to his teenaged son, Samori. It's not the sappy, Valentine sort of love letter that we've received many of, but the kind where you respect and love the other person so much that you want to share the most important parts of yourself with the other person. The kind that is invaluable because it is so rare.

I was deeply moved, not just because of the nature of the story – Coates talks about the way fear has been essential and necessary in his life and also has damaged him (think about the lost energy and resources) – but by the relationship between this father and son. Either Coates has profoundly misread Samori or his son is pretty spectacular. I'd put my money on the latter.

Just before I started college, my best friend had a stroke and died. This was arguably the single most important event in my life. I learned that life is short and that our end is unpredictable. I learned to treasure every minute. Jane's death, paradoxically, moved me from the dark side to the light.

One of Coates' friends, not a close friend but more than an acquaintance, was shot by a police officer when Coates and Prince Jones were at Howard University. Prince Jones was described as a handsome, thoughtful, generous, kind, born-again Black man who loved to read. His mother was a pediatrician with humble beginnings, but Prince had a privileged upbringing – annual ski trips and jaunts to Europe. He was traveling to visit his fiancé when he was shot and killed near her home. The police officer accused Prince of trying to run him down. There were no witnesses and no proof to contradict this assertion, and no charges were filed against the officer.

Dr. Jones compared her son's death to Solomon Northrup's experiences (12 Years a Slave), a free Black man in upper New York who was captured and sold into slavery: "[Northrup] had means. He had a family. He was living like a human being. And one racist act took him back. And the same is true of me." (p. 145)

What did Coates, Dr. Jones, and perhaps Northrup conclude? Probably something like "I am never completely safe, no matter what I have done, no matter how successful I am." "I must always be ready to protect my loved ones and myself." "Whites will never see me as an individual of worth rather than as a member of the faceless, objectified, and worthless masses." Coates said:

Even now [kissing you and telling you I love you] does not feel a wholly natural act so much as it feels like ritual. And that is because I am wounded. That is because I am tied to old ways, which I learned in a hard house. It was a loving house even as it was besieged by its country, but it was hard. Even in Paris, I could not shake the old ways, the instinct to watch my back at every pass, and always be ready to go. (pp. 125-126)

Coates' thesis is broader than I have shown here, but his larger goal remains consistent. As he tells Samori:

Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca [Howard University]. Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers [Whites]. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all. (p. 151)

Black, White, Red, or Green, this is not an easy book, but it has important messages about race (only our attempts to pigeonhole others and create hierarchies), oppression and privilege, and the limits of such privilege for some people. This is an important book about the ways that context impacts our lives and our attempts to be or do more. It may inspire all of us to be more. ...more

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Jan 27, 2016 Maya B added it

Shelves: 1st-time-reading-this-author

Definitely not my go to book for racial injustice or inequality. I know this was a letter to his son, but it did not resonate. it was like reading an unfinished product. I might try to listen to the audio version later on in the future.

4 likes · Like · see review

Oct 20, 2015 Stephanie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Not only some of the most important writing I have ever read, but some of the most powerful, beautiful writing I have ever read. Read it for its content, yes, the content is essential--we need to listen to what Coates is saying, these words need to move us to action. But also read it for its sentences. This book will teach you how to write.

3 likes · Like · see review

Dec 14, 2015 Caryl rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook, shelf-sitter, cwb-2016, 7220

Everyone should read this. Coates speaks to his 15-year-old son, and to all of us.

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Feb 25, 2024 Alana rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy, political, educational, current-events, biographical

I liked the almost epistletory style of the writing, which often felt more poetic than prose. It's musings of a father who has seen a lot of the negative of the world, and honestly, it felt very depressing at times and hopeless. However, in the end he notes that while he feels tainted by the fears he had grown up with, of always walking through the world a certain, protective way, be feels hope when he sees more fearlessness in his son, that there has been progress made after all. Sure, we have ...more

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Aug 10, 2017 V.E. Ulett rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

There are hard home truths in this book / essay that I wish all Americans would read, and anyone outside our nation that wants to understand our particular pathology.

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