Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015
Memoir & biography HistoryContemporary fictionMystery, thriller & crime
A father writes to his teenage son about growing up black in America, and about the body, history, and the Dream.
Feels like serenity. About power.
A page from the book
What if the categories we treat as natural were the last thing to arrive?
The host read these words for the audience, and when she finished she turned to the subject of my body, although she did not mention it specifically. But by now I am accustomed to intelligent people asking about the condition of my body without realizing the nature of their request. Specifically, the host wished to know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence. Hearing this, I felt an old and indistinct sadness well up in me. The answer to this question is the record of the believers themselves. The answer is American history. Ta-Nehisi Coates.Coates wrote it as a letter to his son, Samori, then fifteen. It won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a Pulitzer finalist.
Books that feel like this
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- What is Between the World and Me like?
- Feels like serenity. About power.
- What should I read after Between the World and Me?
- If you liked Between the World and Me, try A Promised Land (Barack Obama), The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison) and House of Sky and Breath (Sarah J. Maas).
A taste of the feed
What love reveals about the person doing the loving.
Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.
The Bluest Eye · Toni Morrison
An oath that refuses to end at any distance.
Our love is stronger than time, greater than any distance. Our love spans across stars and worlds. I will find you again, I promise.
House of Sky and Breath · Sarah J. Maas
The distance between a nice evening out and the life you came from.
I WAS SITTING IN a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.
The Glass Castle · Jeannette Walls
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed