Between the World and Me is more than just a book about racial injustices in America. It’s a 176 page letter written by Ta-Nehisi Coates to his 15 year old son Samori Coates. This letter is as personal and vulnerable as it is informative and mind opening, and Coates gifts it to the world.
I read this book because I liked the concept of the letter format from father to son, and because I know I need to learn more about institutional racism if I want to make any change in our corrupt system. It was also recommended by a lot of activists who I follow online. I’ll try not to summarize the whole thing, but instead refer to the main points that made the book worth buying. To start off, let me share one of my favorite quotes from the book, (it was hard to choose just one.)
“But race is the child of racism, not the father.”
Coates documents the major obstacles and turning points that have accumulated in his life to teach his son the simultaneity of feeling powerful yet powerless while inhabiting a black body in America. He draws out the pain of being born into a body that he has no control over, and the things black people do to try to get that control back. Coates writes this in hopes of teaching his son about his roots, while inscribing in him in almost every other page how easily he could disappear from his body.
“I am not a cynic. I love you, and I love the world, and I love it more with every new inch I discover. But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know.”
Something hard to forget about this reading is that Coates always uses the term “body” when referring to black people being killed. Black bodies being killed because police officers pull them over for no reason, because one wrong gesture in the streets of Harlem means war with other black bodies, or because a white lady in her territory on the Upper West Side of Manhattan could threaten to have black bodies arrested.
I’ll be ending this book review on the part that stuck with me the most. Coates being vulnerable and honest with his son about struggling to demonstrate the love he has for him. It seems to me that he used this letter as an opportunity to openly apologize to him for ever being too cold or not loving enough. He doesn’t try to justify his behavior, instead it justifies itself. He shares with us how he grew up, not being exposed to soft love but instead more hard, aggressive love. Despite the wounds he carries from growing up in constant fear of his father beating him with his belt, his son gave him something to live for and he loves him so much.
I respect this part of the book the most, because we all know hard it can be for our parents to admit to hurting us. For him to be so open about it is brave and inspiring. It proves how much he cares about a relationship that not a lot of black men are privileged to have with their sons.
The following excerpt is how Coates described being a new father.
“I felt that I had crossed some threshold, out of the foyer of my life and into the living room. Everything that was the past seemed to be another life. There was before you, and then there was after, and in this after, you were the God I’d never had. I submitted before your needs, and I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival’s sake. I must survive for you.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes like a gifted artist who paints beautiful pictures without even trying. As a person of color reading this, it made me feel not alone in a place that’s quick to make you feel isolated. I loved the book so much that I want to read it a second time to get the most out of it as possible.
If you’re interested, here’s a link to his book on Amazon. If you’re a more visual person and want to see more of his personality, here’s an interview he did at a high school in Illinois.