Between the World and Me

As a white man, and a father, this was an incredibly important book for me to read. My kids appear and are treated as white, so I don't have to deal with the same kind of fear for them that Coates does. I look at the world a little differently because of reading this. Learning to notice the barriers between the "American Dream" and reality is incredibly important. Each story I hear from those that have always seen that barrier helps make me a better ally, and a better person.

Having started this a few times over the years, today I finally finished it. It just does not resonate with me: it feels preachy; his continuous identification of himself with his body is jarring, his talk of "loss of body" or "destruction of body" feels so weird - but maybe that's just me. It doesn't matter.

I wasn't even going to post this review, but minutes after finishing the book a friend reminded me of Yaa Gyasi's sublime [b:Homegoing|27071490|Homegoing|Yaa Gyasi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1448108591l/27071490.SY75.jpg|47113792]. The memories and emotions and tears came flooding back to me, my breath caught, and I'm hijacking this review to say: if you, like me, have struggled to read Coates, try [b:Homegoing|27071490|Homegoing|Yaa Gyasi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1448108591l/27071490.SY75.jpg|47113792].

(No rating. My rating is not important nor worthwhile.)

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said here. It's a fantastic book, written by a fantastic man, about circumstances that shouldn't exist. I'm not the key demographic this book is aimed at, but I still walked away with something, even if that something is a vague sadness at how we ended up here at this point.

This made such a powerful impression on me. When you pare down to the most essential truth you are left with a body. There may be rhetoric or history or economic conditioning to influence that body but in the end we are bodies. This is such an incredible and painful essay by Mr. Coates. I'm beside myself.

In the little bit of this book I read, Coates said a number of thoughtful, insightful things. And that's great. But I hate the way he writes this so much. I've read articles by him before that I liked, but the dense and flowery writing of Between the World and Me is like reading a 16th-century pamphlet on a nobleman's struggle with gout.

Often he seems to just be playing with language for the fun of it. His constant use of the word "body" in sentences that would commonly use words like "safety" or "life" seems to have become popular, but to me it is distancing; with Coates, the definition of "body" feels indistinct, becoming whatever he wants it to be in that particular sentence.

According to my Kindle the book can be read in two hours, and I'm sure the guy has a lot of interesting things to say, but I find the style so aggravating, so floaty, so indirect in its directness, that I found reading it close to intolerable.

Between the World and Me is a beautifully penned memoir-letter intended for the author's son, but also profound and meaningful for others, as well. Ta-Nehisi Coates has attempted to communicate what is was like for him to grow up as an African American male in this country during a certain time and how his feelings have been informed by his experiences and his knowledge of history. I found it informative and unforgettable.

I would recommend this to absolutely anyone; it's an important work.

This small book packs a big punch. The writing is fluid and smart, and the structure - written as a letter to his 15 year old son - helps it land square in your gut. It definitely opened my eyes and helped me understand what it is to be "brown" in the United States - and the sins we're all guilty of, even if our ancestors weren't slave-holders.

Additionally, I hadn't realized Coates was friends with Prince Jones and would write about him in this book. When his name popped up, I stopped, cold. I knew Prince - he worked in my gym and was always ready with kind words and a friendly smile. I remember being shocked when he was killed - but I hadn't realized the greater context of blue-on-black killings at the time. This book would've been powerful without a personal connection to one of his subjects, but that tipped it over the edge for me.

And the ending - he does a masterful job pulling up to an even broader perspective of where we are in the world and the fate that awaits us all. I suspect people who found some of his language or ideas tough to grasp will find some common ground in those final sentences.

I'll have to go read the book that won this category for the 2015 Pulitzer, because I'm struggling to see how anything could've topped this.

Powerful, by writing the book as a letter to his son, Ta-Nehisi describes with painful beauty the struggles inherent in being seen as black. Don't read this so you can know or truly understand what it is to be black in this country, read it so you can at least be aware of the totality of the struggle, pain, and horror. Read it only to open your eyes, and try not to forget the lessons when you leave the world Ta-Nehisi reveals through his words, until the final page.

What an absolutely brilliant book. This is the first and only piece I've read by Coates, but I feel comfortable calling him one of my favorite authors. I'm tempted to turn around and read this book again right now--it's just that good. If you're interested in understanding what it means to have a black body in America, read this book now.

John Brown's raid struck a nerve on the eve of the Civil War because it evoked the white South's deepest fear: that having been the masters they would become the slaves, and that the cruelties they had visited on their "property" would be visited upon them in their turn. This has been the deepest fear of "white" America since both before and after the Civil War, and it explains a great deal about the violence of American policy domestic and foreign. It is reflected to this day in the virulent racism of the white underclass that flocks to the banner of Donald Trump.

To keep our privileged position in the world, we must suppress those of whom we have taken advantage, generally defined as "non-white": whether African American, Asian, African, or Arab. We live with the comment misattributed to George Orwell that "We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us." And in doing so, we project our own violence onto them. If we live in fear of Muslim Arab terror, it is nothing to the hundredfold terror we have visited upon the Muslims and the Arabs. A friend of mine likes to say that people in the Middle East have no respect for human life, and yet the minimum count of the civilians murdered in the Iraq War is 120,000. It shows itself in the internment of Japanese Americans and the ruthlessness and racism of the War in the Pacific. It is manifested in the winning of the West and the ethic cleansing of the Native American. Of course, the phenomenon is not limited to America, witness the German genocide of the Jews. This insight, although expressed in slightly different terms, lies at the heart of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me.

The fragility of the "black body" permeates Coates' work; he posits that African Americans have a unique appreciation of the violence that is visited upon them, whether by Baltimore gangs or the Prince George's County's police. This is the violence that preserves untroubled white America's dream of peaceful suburbs and two cars in the garage, built on the suffering of the people it excludes. It is reflected in our gated communities, the fear of my neighbours in suburban Detroit even to enter the city, inhabited by alien beings quite forthrightly described as n*s. It is reflected in our reflexive attribution of criminality to African Americans, the readiness of the police to shoot and the ease with which we excuse the shootings. It is reflected in our segregated neighbourhoods and our segregated schools. Coates talks about how from the days of his childhood to his present life in New York as a well-known writer, a third of his brain has always been devoted to self-preservation, whether in be fear of violence in the 'hood or fear of arrest in upscale New York.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master." Like it or not, the ruthless pace of demographics is eroding the privileged position of "white America," no longer a majority in "their country." There will not be peace at home or abroad until people who consider themselves white are willing to renounce their Dream of supremacy and the violence that attends it. And yet the reality is that white America simply lives in denial of the fragility of their own bodies, a denial that is enabled by the violence out of sight at the margins of their society, for our houses are built on sand, and we can only hope that the violence we have meted out to others will not be repaid upon us. We are not ready for Lincoln's prophecy that the war shall continue "until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword." It has not been paid yet.

Wow. This is going to take a while to digest.

This is such a powerful book that is so personal and yet so universal. Every American needs to read this.