Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
If the point of a book is to experience the world from another’s viewpoint, just for a little while, this book succeeds. It’s short, around 150 pages in the hardback, and it takes the frame of a father’s letter to his son. It’s dark enough that I appreciated the short length. Some information is hard to take in large doses.
Coates has an impressive use of cadence and meter not often seen in modern literature. If this book were read aloud in a park, people would veer off the path to come closer and hear what was being said, perhaps mistaking it for long-form poetry. A fan of his attributed that to his Hip-Hop roots. The pleasantness of the prose helped ease the sadness of the message.
Most of what Coates focuses on is police brutality, and how it’s a reflection of an American culture that invented the concept of “white” to give the concept of “black” meaning. Before Americans considered themselves “white” they had other tribes, like Mennonite or Italian or Jewish or Greek. He writes about what it’s like to be raised in a country where you have known intrinsically that the powers that be do not value your right to an unharmed body. He centers this discussion around the story of a college friend, who despite having excelled in every other way, still lost his life to police brutality.
Coates puts some things into words which I knew but couldn’t describe well. He also told me a lot of things I ought to have known but didn’t, and some things I couldn’t possibly have known and may never understand. He made me think about the history of race relations, and police brutality, and the consequences of living in fear. I recommend this for American readers.
