Reading Between the world and me by Ta-Nehisi Coates was a great experience.Coates writes his fifteen-year-old son a letter discussing his “struggles with being Black in America”, and he offers his son truth about the shackles of the streets and school, an apology for his fear and for his “learned hardness”, and a way out of being unshackled from his “history”, his “assigned Blackness”.Coates shares the harsh truth about growing up in Baltimore. Coates explains that the shackles of the streets were a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation”. It was either looking down the barrel of a gun held by a young boy or getting beat by his father for letting another boy steal from him “Not being violent enough could cost me my body. Being too
