Between The World and Me

[Joan]

Discussion starts October 15.

[Joan]

I wonder what you expected from this book - before you started reading it?
It has been on my TBR for quite awhile, but I kept putting off reading it. Procrastination for me usually means I am afraid or worried about a task. And I was worried (view spoiler)[
I was worried that it would be too heartbreaking to read the details of suffering caused by racism.
I was worried that it would leave me feeling powerless and pessimistic about my society.
I was worried that it would leave me feeling attacked and quilty about my comfortable, suburban professional and very white existence. (hide spoiler)]
"...it was like she was asking me to awaken her from the most gorgeous dream." seemed directed straight at me. (p10 in edition Between the World and Me)
So I am wondering what you expected before you opened this book.

[Joan]

The Guardian has two reviews both raise intesting questions.
14-Jul- 2015 by Syreeta McFadden,
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

"After all, Between the World and Me is an exhortation against blindness. Coates wants to push us to see the delusions we’ve been feeding ourselves and insist we struggle through the Dream, that false narrative of America’s history, by reckoning with its ugliness. I use the word “reckoning” carefully; I admired how Coates refrains from outright condemnations of the American experiment, wanting to wrestle with it rather than destroy it. Throughout he resists the urge to tie up these ugly complexities with anything pat, delivering a perspective, in many ways, that you could call post-cynical.

In fact, Between the World and Me doesn’t aspire to anything so large – or vague – as “overcoming” or “transcending” race to defeat racism. It is simply about surviving, and remembering. Coates’s preoccupation is not with saving the soul of America. It’s urging it, to borrow a phrase you see around a lot lately, to “stay woke”.

But she asks, where are the stories of women, black women?

[Joan]

8-Oct-2015 Guardian review by Sukhdev Sandhu says,

– a now exalted writer and spokesman for black America
The prominent journalist has issued a passionate call for change. But where are the discussions of class, and is he guilty of parochialism?

Between the World and Me apparently came about when Coates asked his editor why no one wrote like Baldwin any more; his editor suggested he try. Borrowing the epistolary form of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963), he addresses it to his 14-year-old son Samori. But Coates doesn’t write like a father so much as an apprentice theologian or a sophomoric logician. Sentences begin with “Thus”, “I propose”, “This leads us to another equally important ideal.” The tone is consistently one of aspirational gravitas, of bewhiskered patriarchs and dollar-bill overlords.

A comparison with Coates’s previous book, a 2008 memoir entitled The Beautiful Struggle, is telling. There he wrote about the world into which he grew up: “cable and Atari plugged into every room, juvenile parenting, niggers sporting kicks with price tags that looked like mortgage bills”. He believed in structural racism and enforced underdevelopment, but he described those forces in less portentous language: “We thought all our battles were homegrown and personal, but, like an evil breeze at our back, we felt invisible hands at work, like someone was still tugging at levers and pulling strings.” In 2015, Coates is a more exalted writer, but his prose seems increasingly ventriloquised and his insistence on Afro-American exceptionalism a kind of parochialism.

[spoko]

Joan wrote: “But she asks, where are the stories of women, black women?”

This strikes me as an odd criticism, since the stories of black women are being told by so many talented, powerful black women themselves. Taken as a critique of the general audience, I suppose it might be meaningful (assuming that this book is much more popular than similar books by black women—I don’t know enough to say whether that’s actually the case). But I can’t imagine why it would make sense for Coates to try and take on the telling of black women’s stories, particularly in a book with such a singular, personal focus. I suspect he’d then be accused of trying to co-opt black women’s lived experience, and that criticism would be more on point.

I also don’t see how he’s guilty of parochialism, at least as far as I understand that word. His viewpoint in this book is purposefully narrow, to be sure. But not any more so than the Baldwin book that inspired it, I don’t think. And I’m not so sure he’s “insisting” on Black exceptionalism so much as recognizing and detailing the unique contours of the Black American experience. Certainly, this book has “the whiff” of class struggle in the way it calls out the Dream as a cause of Blacks’ oppression, and he could have faced that a little more directly. But I think it would have been a distraction from what he was trying to focus on. Any time an author sets about detailing a system of oppression, there’s nothing easier than to point out all the other systems that he could have detailed instead, or in addition. The Oppression Olympics is a popular sport, but not necessarily a constructive one.

[Mary Anne]

Really good scheduling to have us discuss Baldwin, then Coates. This comes from the back flap of the Coates book:

“I’ve 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 Coates’s 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.” – TONI MORRISON

Two points:
1. This book is supposed to be about black male life, and
2. Like The Fire Next Time, the frame of the book rests on "The Talk" that black men must have with their adolescent sons so they can get along in the white world. Remember the nation's surprise when game show host Steve Harvey revealed that he had "The Talk" with his son? Most of us did not know about it then, and most likely there's still a lack of knowledge or interest in the subject.

[Ethan]

I do think it is an unfair criticism of the book to specifically point out the lack of a female perspective.

Firstly, Coates is a man who set out to write about his experience of being a Black man in America and seeing his son grapple with that existence in the same way that he has.

Second, I actually found Coates' recalling the death of his collegiate friend, specifically the toll it took on that man's mother, to be one of the more emotionally harrowing moments of the entire work.

[Joan]

The murder of Prince was heartbreaking.
The other scenes that affected me were the altercation when his small son was shoved by a woman in a rush. I think how many times have I been a part of such interactions - near an adult rushing & pushing an elderly person or child on an escalator — and still I don’t know how to react — how to intervene.

The scene I loved was his trip through Geneva to Paris —

[Joan]

Does the letter to his son format work for you? Clearly one of the Guardian reviewers did not like it.

It works quite well, in my opinion. I feel like he is writing directly to his readers, to me. I don’t sense his son as the recipient though, perhaps I am too ego centric.

I have not read The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin which inspired this book.

[Ethan]

The format works well for me. I found it really showed how intimate the writing is. It felt as if Coates was letting me in on something that I wouldn't otherwise have been privy to.

[Joan]

At the end of chapter 2, Coates recounts how traveling in France enabled him to temporarily escape his blackness because he was foremost an American in Paris.
Any thoughts on how your perceived race or nationality has affected your travel experiences?
I’ve enjoyed many trips to places where I don’t speak the language and clearly don’t know the customs, but…
I have had 3 uncomfortable experiences due to my race/nationality:
in one country I was denied entry to a coffee shop because they didn’t serve caucasians - they claimed to be closing and shooed me away. I only found out later from friends that my appearance was the problem.
Half a world away, I sought help from a police officer — who then hinted that he needed a bribe to get the problem fixed, he thought it wouldn’t be a big deal for a rich American.
On yet another continent, I was denied a map for the city bus system because I might be a terrorist.

I can't imagine the stress of facing such discrimination in the place I call home.

[Joan]

Did you read any of the books that nearly won the National Book award winner for non-fiction in 2015

The other finalists that year in this catagory were:
Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery
If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran by Carla Power
Ordinary Light by Tracy K. Smith

Any thoughts on the winner and the runners up?

[Joan]

Ann wrote: "I listened to The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness. Author Sy Montgomery makes an enthusiastic narrator for her own work...."

Ann, I started The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness but gave it up because I expected more science.

After looking at the list, I am going to try If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran, I’ve not read anything by Carla Power

[Ruth]

I bought Between The World and Me, but I didn't last very long in attempting to read it. This has nothing to do with the quality of the book or the importance of what Coates is attempting and everything to do with me. I am so overloaded with stress right now that I just can't handle any more and in a few pages I was so upset I couldn't continue.

[Donna]

Oh, very sorry to hear that you are dealing with a lot of stress, Ruth. That’s no fun, for sure. Wishing you some better days ahead.

[Ruth]

Donna wrote: "Oh, very sorry to hear that you are dealing with a lot of stress, Ruth. That’s no fun, for sure. Wishing you some better days ahead."

It’s just the mess we’re all having to deal with lately.

[Joan]

Ruth wrote: "I bought Between The World and Me, but I didn't last very long in attempting to read it. This has nothing to do with the quality of the book or the importance of what Coates is attempting and every..."

The mess and stress - for sure!
I had to put aside The Women of the Copper Country for a similarreason.
For me Between the World and Me triggered cycles of sadness/helplessness and then flashes hope. The author seemed to be saying that if we all come together & acknowlege our failures, we can live up to our ideals.

[Ruth]

I’m glad to hear that, Joan, and I may very well come back to the book sometime in the future when I’m not feeling so fragile.

[Lynn]

I had a similar experience, Ruth. I had a library copy and eventually just returned it because I couldn't get past the first few pages. I even had trouble picking the book up to attempt reading. Most of my reading has been a lot lighter than usual for the past year or more.

[Ethan]

Joan - I've experienced a bit of discrimination for not knowing the language in other countries, but fortunately nothing to the level of what Coates outlines here.

Ruth and Lynn - I completely understand your feelings of the subject matter being a bit too heavy, especially considering everything we've gone through in the past 2 years. I was struck by the way Coates seems resigned to his position in the world, devoid of any real hope for a change. My hope for you both is that you're able to get to the other side of whatever you are facing.

[Joan]

Ostensibly, Coates wrote this to his son — yet he sent it out to all of us. What response do you think he wants from his readers?

(view spoiler)[Though much of the book is bleak, I think he has a strong hope/expectation that we can and will all be better people. (hide spoiler)]
Am I just a delusional Pollyanna? Or is this more aligned with the teachings of Elijah Muhammad?

[spoko]

Having followed Coates for several years, the one thing I would definitely say about his take on the country (and probably the world at large) is that he's not optimistic. He does point out glimmers of hope, but when he provides more detail (in interviews, articles, etc.) he's always quite clear that those are glimmers, and not the dominant signals.

[Joan]

The Mecca, Howard University, is an important spiritual home for Coates. It reminds me of the way Joy Harjo speaks of her feelings for The Institute of American Indian Arts, and that Sally Ride credited her confidence in physics in part to single-sex education at The Westlake School for Girls.

[Joan]

spoko wrote: "Having followed Coates for several years, the one thing I would definitely say about his take on the country (and probably the world at large) is that he's not optimistic. He does point out glimmer..."

Have you read any books about MalcomX or Marcus Garvey? Can you recommend any?