Maria Knodt

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me

A touching book in which American author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a letter to his young son about the story of race in America and how it is to live as a black person in the U.S. He recounts his experiences growing up in Baltimore, attending Howard University, traveling to historical sites in the U.S. and Europe – and puts it all in the context of historical events and their influence on black people in the present. Beautifully written in philosophical, almost poetic prose that will make you think about racism, race, and the difficulties faced to this day by African-Americans – police violence, economic hardships, and racial profiling. A classic that should be required reading for everyone!

“And I am afraid. I feel the fear most acutely whenever you leave me. But I was afraid long before you, and in this I was unoriginal. When I was your age the only people I knew were black, and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid. I had seen this fear all my young life, though I had not always recognized it as such.

It was always right in front of me. The fear was there in the extravagant boys of my neighborhood, in their large rings and medallions, their big puffy coats and full-length fur -collared leathers, which was their amor against their world. They would stand on the corner of Gwynn Oak and Liberty, or Cold Spring and Park Heights, or outside Mondawmin Mall, with their hands dipped in Russell sweats. I think back on those boys now and all I see is fear, and all I see in them girding themselves against the ghosts of the bad old days when the Mississippi mob gathered ’round their grandfathers so that the branches of the black body might be torched, then cut away. The fear lived on in their practiced bop, their slouching denim, their big T-shirts, the calculated angle of their baseball caps, a catalog of behaviors and garments enlisted to inspire the belief that these boys were in firm possession of everything they desired.”