Between the World and Me is a letter from father to son. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote it to his own child, Samori Coates, resolving to hide nothing about the lifelong burden he would have to carry as a black man living in America: the constant fear, violence, and injustice. “The struggle is really all I have for you because it is the only portion of the world under your control,” Coates tells his son. “I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.” Between the World and Me is a tender and heartbreaking exploration of systemic racism, from the perspective of a black man determined to uncover the dark secrets of the world for his child.
Coates grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland, surrounded by street fights, music from boom boxes, and lovingly anxious parents who beat him with a belt. He describes it, “to be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world, before all the guns, fists, knives, crack, rape, and disease.” He attends Howard College. There he meets the successful and well-liked Prince Jones, a black man who is soon shot six times in the back by a killer who had tailed him on his way to see his fiancée.
Coates’ just and deep-rooted anger that spills outward in response to this murder is, I think, expressed in an incredible way through this letter. His own experiences with the history of white supremacy has given him a full and vivid view of racial segregation in America. This he delineates for both his son and the reader in a manner that is honest, simple, and refined. His bitter disappointment in the world is present in, but does not overfill, his portrayal. Amidst his own grief, he is controlled and focused. His ability to do so proves him a mature and self-restrained individual, a trustworthy narrator of this unjust and widespread crisis, and a father capable of writing such a letter to his son.
If the oppression of black people forms the body of the book, the parental love for a child is the heart of it. As a black parent, Coates fears for his son’s life in a way no parent should have to. He says to Samori, “Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made.” If his sketch of racism in America broadens the reader’s knowledge, his undisguised love for his child is an emotional appeal to the reader as a human. It is a call to action that must unite families worldwide; not all of them would have experienced what Coates has as an African American, but the unbreakable love for one’s child is something that drives every parent to do the impossible. In writing this difficult and eye-opening letter to Samori, Coates is pleading with every parent to aid him in ensuring a better world for the children.
By sharing his own perception of our broken society, Coates has delivered a powerful and focused blow to the structured racism in the world. He is meticulous in tracing its development through history, the attempted erasures of black culture and dignity. He is emotional when he addresses his son, as any father would be when telling his young child about such harsh things. Between the World and Me is both a letter and a wake-up call: we must do what we can, both as individuals and a community, so that no parent should have to place their child between themselves and a racist world.
