Product Overview
Hailed by Toni Morrison as required reading, a bold and personal literary exploration of Americas racial history by the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States (The New York Observer)
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER | NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER | PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST |NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST |NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review O: The Oprah Magazine The Washington Post People Entertainment Weekly Vogue Los Angeles Times San Francisco Chronicle Chicago Tribune New York Newsday Library Journal Publishers Weekly
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nations history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of race, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and menbodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coatess attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his sonand readersthe story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose childrens lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Praise for Between the World and Me
Powerful . . . a searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today.Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Eloquent . . . in the tradition of James Baldwin with echoes of Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man . . . an autobiography of the black body in America.The Boston Globe
Brilliant . . . [Coates] is firing on all cylinders.The Washington Post
Urgent, lyrical, and devastating . . . a new classic of our time.Vogue
A crucial book during this moment of generational awakening.The New Yorker
Titanic and timely . . . essential reading.Entertainment Weekly
