Review: Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had this on my bookshelf for a while, and kept meaning to read it. Finally got around to it and now believe this to be a book everyone living in America in 2018 should read. You may recognize Coates' name as the author of the controversial Atlantic cover piece from a few years back making the case for reparations for slavery. This book is beautiful, discouraging, encouraging, and perhaps a small great example of why even those of us who are "not racist" really don't get it.

The form of the book is Coates writing a letter to his son about growing up black in America. He talks about everything from his childhood to the murders of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice, from his years at Howard University to the micro- and macro- aggressions he faces daily. He covers slavery, his own love and marriage, fatherhood, and what is fair and unfair in the world in a dense, short 152 page "letter."

This book is beautifully written, truly, and several times caused me to stop and think and really pay attention to what is happening to the people of color in our country, and to feel great shame about it.

The two passages that hit me the most follow. I will leave them without comment, and hope that they encourage you to read the book:

"Always remember that Trayvon Martin was a boy, that Tamir Rice was a particular boy, that Jordan Davis was a boy, like you. When you hear these names think of all the wealth poured into them. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the day care, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into each of them, was sent flowing back to the earth."

"Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dressmaking and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone."


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