Ta Nashi Coates's Between The World And Me

Between the World and Me is a phenomenally written work of literature. A memoir of the life of black Ta’nashi Coates in the form of letter to his fifteen-year-old son. Readers follow him as he goes from a boy in the ghettos of Baltimore, to what he refers to as the Mecca that is Howard, to a man raising his son in a white America. Coates makes good points, but as I continued to read it seems that he contradicts these point. At first glance this book seems like a father’s attempt soothe his son’s uneasiness about his position as a young black man in America, during a time when many young black men are being killed. After taking a deeper look in the book and I did further research on Coates, I began to question his true intentions for writing this. Is Between the World and Me really for his son? Is if for the black community who already knows this black narrative all too well? Is it for the white …show more content…
Here is a few that I think are significant: “Your body can be destroyed” (Coates pg 13) “-what matters is our condition, what matters is the system that makes your body breakable” (Coates pg 19) “Our current politics tell you that you should fall victim to such an assault and lose your body, it somehow must be your fault” (Coates pg 109) “-even more I knew that he had found himself while studying in prison and that when he emerged from the jails, returned wielding some old power that made him speak as though his body were his own” (Coates pg 34) Throughout the book Coates continues to talk about the black body and how it did not belong black Americans. This something I immediately related to. As a black woman, I am plague with stigmas and assumptions about my attitude, my education level, my relationship with my father and about my future. My body does not belong to me. At all times I most protect my body and the little ownership that I have. As a woman if I put myself in an unsafe environment where my body can be