Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Between the World and Me” is an honest, raw love letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his fifteen-year-old son, Samori. The six-chapter letter was conceived after Coates watched his son’s heartache at the announcement that there would be no charges filed against Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown. Coates reveals his own fears for his son and his frustrations with the world the boy is growing up in. He writes about the many senseless murders of black men; men who would still be alive if it weren’t for their black bodies. Coates tells his son, “You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you.” Except the last sentence contradicts the world in which we live. Because Coates is afraid, both for his son and himself, but also of the world in which they live. The word body is repeated excessively in his letter. It is an insightful and persuasive argument that, first and foremost, we are a body. We are a body before any other distinguishing markers or features, and they embody a state of blackness. While this revelation isn’t new, the way Coates strings together his argument so elegantly causes one to pause and contemplate. His contrasts between human ideals and the stark realities of life rooted in racism are raw and painful. I found myself comparing this letter to Isabel Wilkerson’s masterpiece, Caste. While Coates points out the ways black bodies have been mistreated, his letter doesn’t provide the depth of contemplation and assessment that Wilkerson’s excellent work did.
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, (List Price: $20, One World, 9780812983814, June 2025)
Reviewed by Nichole, Bodacious Bookstore and Cafe in Pensacola, Florida
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“My dad never spoke much about his family growing up. I knew some basics. He had grown up in Hawaii. His Aunt Ruth lived in New York, and his parents had passed. So when he called me and said Aunt Ruth wants to meet you, do you want to go meet her? I was like, so excited. This was like finally a step into my father’s past. We drove to Charleston and went and met my Aunt Ruth and we walked in and she was just this sweet little old lady. We sat and had a great conversation. I was really enjoying getting to know her. And on the coffee table next to where she was sitting, I noticed this wedding picture, and I looked at it. And I’m like, Oh, are those my grandparents? And she nodded, Yes. And I was like, Can you tell me something about them? My father never speaks of them. And she just sat there and didn’t respond. [I asked] Can you tell me anything? How did they meet, when did they get married? And she cut me off and she said, You have a good life. Don’t ruin it with the past.”
“[It’s] often not what you get around stories that involve African Americans. Most of us cannot trace our histories all the way back to a slave ship or to a particular country in Africa because the records of the enslaved were not recorded in detail. So it’s incredible and very powerful that these descendants know the actual stories of their ancestors that came from Africa.
