In the one hundred fifty years since the end of the Civil War and the ratificiation of the Thirteenth Amendment, the story of race and America has remained a brutally simple one, written on flesh: It is the story of the black body, exploited to create the country s foundational wealth, violently segregated to unite a nation after a civil war, and, today, still disproportionately threatened, locked up, and killed in our streets. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all regardless of race honestly reckon with our country s fraught racial history and free ourselves from its burden?

"Between the World and Me "is Ta-Nehisi Coates s attempt to answer those questions, presented in the form of a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son and readers the story of his own awakening to the truth about history and race through a series of revelatory experiences: immersion in nationalist mythology as a child; engagement with history, poetry, and love at Howard University; travels to Civil War battlefields and the South Side of Chicago; a journey to France that reorients his sense of the world; and pilgrimages to the homes of mothers whose children s lives have been taken as American plunder. Taken together, these stories map a winding path toward a kind of liberation a journey from fear and confusion to a full and honest understanding of the world as it is.

Masterfully woven from lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, "Between the World and Me "offers a powerful new framework for understanding America s history and current crisis, and a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Format: Paperback
Published: in USA in 2015
Publisher: Text Publishing Co
Pages: 166
Language: English
ISBN 13: 9781925240702
ISBN 10: 1925240703