Analysis Of The Book Between The World And Me

The second book that I read this summer was Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The book is an open letter to his adolescent son explaining some of the experiences his son will have to go because he exist in two worlds, and Coates also shares some of the experience he went through being an African American in America. In the book, Coates shares his childhood experience of living in South-side Chicago and his battle between surviving the streets and trying to survive school. However, Coates is able to escape from his circumstances by going to the Mecca, also known as Howard University. Coates uses the Mecca to begin to educate himself and attempt to find a way between the worlds with the help of literature about Malcom X, Chancellor …show more content…
Shown throughout our history by using black bodies in order to claim this country like the Civil War and through slavery where black bodies were used as a currency. Coates writes, “... our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of the American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies--cotton--was America’s primary export” (101). Throughout the book Coates shows the idea of white supremacy in several ways. An example is a poem that Coates uses by James Baldwin, “And have brought humanity to the edge of/oblivion: because they think they are white” (133). The connotations on the word white are entitled, superiority, and child-like, and throughout the book Coates uses the statement “people who believe that they are white”. The idea of white supremacy is still prevalent in our society and is manifested clearly in our police force. Coates says, “Their ‘safety’ was in school, portfolio, and skyscrapers. Ours was in men with guns who could only view us with the same contempt as the society that sent them” (85). In the book, Coates tells his son that he is unable to protect his body, and that those who believe