From a Father to his Son: Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me"
In my circles, an ardent buzz has been around Ta-Nahesi Coates' Between the World and Me . Jon Stewart , at the end of his run, interviewed him. President Obama is reading him on vacation . Friends have read him this summer and recommended him. Flying to Washington, D.C. recently, he came up in conversation with a stranger after discussing Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow , which the stranger was reading. The book has drawn its stream of praise (e.g., Michelle Alexander in The New York Times ) and criticism ( Rich Lowry in Politico.com ). The book arrived some time ago, but I finally took Monday afternoon and devoured it. Coates, inspired by rereading James Baldwin 's The Fire Next Time , structures his book, written to his son, in three segments. Coates' description of the body, especially the Black body, and the violence done to it was striking. Coates' description and dismissal of the Dream and the Dreamer appeals to me as bearing a weighty truth. The b...