From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Start date: July 11, 2017

Finish date: July 14, 2017

Discussion: 2017 Read Harder Challenge

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2017 Read Harder Challenge

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What Members Thought

Feb 21, 2016 Donna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, nonfiction, african-american-authors

Read again 06/26/16. Both print and audio. Leading book discussion on this 06/28.

I felt the anger in the author this time and he has a right to be angry.

I read the first half of this book and listened to the second half. I believe it is an important book for U.S. citizens to read. I read this immediately after finishing "Americanah" which is a Nigerian woman's experience of being "black" in America. The books resonate with each other.

I find it hard to judge this book as my view is colored by b ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Oct 19, 2015 Samantha rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: poc-author-2015

Beautiful and heartbreaking.

3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 14, 2015 Kerry rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, fromthelibrary, african-american

This was great and I understand why everybody went so crazy about it last year. It's important and while it was eloquent and true, there wasn't anything super-surprising either, you know? I was never like "!! what!" but mostly "yep, yep, yep, oh god." I mean, he does put things in certain ways I hadn't thought of before, and then it was like, "oh, shit, yeah."

It's basically written as an essay, a letter to his son, and I liked that format a lot.

Everyone should read it. It might help. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Jul 25, 2015 Melissa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: books-to-think-about

Wow. Every word, wow. So important and should be read by every person.

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Jul 19, 2015 Jeff Scott rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, racism, race, essays, fav-15

"It was a normal mistake of which many are guilty: He thought he was a man and that men were not meant to be pushed around. But it was hot downtown and he forgot his history, he forgot the time and the place. He lost his hold on reality. There was a cop and a waiting audience but he was Tod Clifton and cops are everywhere. The cop? “What about him? He was a cop. A good citizen. But this cop had an itching finger and an eager ear for a word that rhymed with 'trigger,' and when Clifton fell he had "It was a normal mistake of which many are guilty: He thought he was a man and that men were not meant to be pushed around. But it was hot downtown and he forgot his history, he forgot the time and the place. He lost his hold on reality. There was a cop and a waiting audience but he was Tod Clifton and cops are everywhere. The cop? “What about him? He was a cop. A good citizen. But this cop had an itching finger and an eager ear for a word that rhymed with 'trigger,' and when Clifton fell he had found it. The Police Special spoke its lines and the rhyme was completed. Just look around you. Look at what he made, look inside you and feel his awful power. It was perfectly natural. The blood ran like blood in a comic-book killing, on a comic-book street in a comic-book town on a comic-book day in a comic-book world."
-Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man (1952)

"You stood up for yourself...that's all a black man can do. You're always outnumbered, always outgunned." Walter Mosley Always Outnumbered Always Outgunned (1997)

Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay Between the World and Me is a modern day telling of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. Coates attempts to prepare his son with his history of growing racial frustration. While Baldwin's text is a warning of things to come, Coates' essay conveys his vexation, unsure as to what to do about it.

It starts with the death of Michael Brown and the Grand Jury refusing to indict the officer who killed him. Coates' son is visibly upset, but he is not comforted. He must be told the story of his father's life and the life that is to come for him.

The main theme is that a black man is not in control of his own body. That today, if he is stopped by a police officer, he isn't in control of that situation. The policeman could do as he likes, arresting, shooting, or destroying his body. As we watch the Black Lives Matter movement, we see this pattern again and again. Whatever happened hundreds of years ago, fifty years ago, or today, it is the same.

I placed the quotes from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Walter Mosley's Always Outnumbered Always Outgunned as an example. One would seem to think that things have been changing, or that we are on the brink of change, but it feels no different. Coates' frustration is palpable, and the reader is left desolate right along with him.

Favorite Passages:

And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments in your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding. it does not matter if the destruction springs from a foolish policy. Sell cigarettes without the proper authority and your body can be destroyed. Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed. Turn into a dark stairwell and your body can be destroyed. The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions. And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detaining, beatings, and humiliations. All of this is common to black people. And all of this is old for black people. No one is held responsible. p. 9

The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests The library was open, unending, free. P 56 ...more

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