Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Publisher: Spiegel & Grau, 2019
- Genre: Biography
- Format: Paperback
- Page Count: 152 pages
- My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
This is hands down one of the best books on US race relations I have ever read. Also one of the best books I have ever read, period.
Despite its slim appearance, Between the World and Me is as heartfelt and intense as I had hoped. The book circles around the topics of ‘losing body’ and ‘the Dream’. Delivered from a father’s perspective to his son, Coates discussed his own experiences in modern day America. His word choices were precise. Instead of the word ‘white’, Coates used ‘raised to be white’.
[R]ace is the child of racism, not the father.
White people are ‘raised to be white’, believe in ‘the Dream’, and live without the fear of ‘losing body’. Not unlike slavery, black people in the US still suffers from the fear of ‘losing body’ everyday. Coates had experienced it in his neighbourhood when he was eleven.
The boy with the small eyes reached into his ski jacket and pulled out a gun. […] in his small eyes I saw a surging rage that could, in an instant, erase my body. […] the boy with the small eyes stood across from me holding my entire body in his small hands. […] He had let it be known how easily I could be selected.
While Samori (Coates’s son) did not grow up experiencing the danger of losing his body easily, he came close while watching Michael Brown’s case. It hit him, as Prince Jones’s death hit Coates.
I tell you now that the question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life, and the pursuit of this question, I have found, ultimately answers itself.
Coates encouraged the rejection of the Dream. The Dream started with enslavement – the taking – of black bodies, and therefore never rightful. He found his Mecca at Howard University, a world energised by strong black people, and his world expanded amidst peers as well as books.
The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books.
I’d like to think this book changed my perspective a little bit. Between the World and Me is indeed something worth everyone reading. [13 Dec 2019]
