In his book “Between the World and Me”, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores what it means to be a black body living in the white world of the United States. Fashioned as a letter to his son, the book recounts Coates’ own experiences as a black man as well as his observations of the present and past treatment of the black body in the United States. Weaving together history, present, and personal, Coates ruminates about how to live in a black body in the United States. It is the wisdom that Coates finds within his own quest of self-discovery that Coates imparts to his son. The journey that Coates shares with his son is one of personal transformation. Occurring over the course of a lifetime, Coates comes to terms with his identification as a black …show more content…
Internal conflict caused by culture is a concept that Edward Hall explores in his book “Beyond Culture”. In this examination of intercultural interactions, Hall argues that people are born into the cultural prison of one’s primary culture. He then goes on to claim that from people can only be free of this prison and experiencing being lost in another (Hall). For Coates, this cultural prison is the permeating fear resulting from the blackness of his body. His internal conflict is therefore created when seeing the world of white, suburban culture. Because this world of pot-roasts and ice cream Sundays seems impossibly distant from the world of fear for his black body, Coates comes to feel the contrast of cultures. He tells his son, “I knew my portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by tenacious gravity, was black and that the other, liberated portion was not” (21). As a result of the shocking divide, Coates comprehends the burden of his race. Coates therefore feels “a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an biding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape (21). The quality of life between the culture belonging to Coates’s skin in contrast to the culture of suburban America creates for Coates a sense of otherness between himself and the rest of the world. Disillusioned, Coates avidly pursues answers to this divide. Coates thereby embarks on a quest to satiate this internal conflict of cultures, beginning his journey towards
In this passage from the novel Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates utilizes meaningful, vivid imagery to not only stress the chasm between two dissonant American realities, but to also bolster his clarion for the American people to abolish the slavery of institutional or personal bias against any background. For example, Coates introduces his audience to the idea that the United States is a galaxy, and that the extremes of the "black" and "white" lifestyles in this galaxy are so severe that they can only know of each other through dispatch (Coates 20-21). Although Coates's language is straightforward, it nevertheless challenges his audience to reconsider a status quo that has maintained social division in an unwitting yet ignorant fashion.
In the poem “It’s a Woman’s World” Eavan Boland reveals a complex conception about a woman’s world. She explains her though process when she sees her fellow neighbor. In explaining her process, she uses multiple devices that helps the reader understand her point of view.
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates’s, is a letter to the author’s fifteen-year-old, African American son, Samori. The author uses his own experiences to explain how to live in a black body in America. This metaphor of the black body is used to show the relationship of American history and the America today. Coates says that blacks are faced with police brutality and mentions in the beginning of his work: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and others that have been the focus of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Parents live in constant fear of losing the bodies of their black children. He demonstrates this on page 15 where he says “My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if something might steal me away…” Coates saw how his father
The book is very personal, incisive, and uncompromising towards those who promote or indulge in the racial hierarchy in America. It is not questionable that Coates goal for the letter is not only to advise and give his son knowledge about the idea of race, which damages all people but is more impactful on the bodies of black women and men, but the letter he writes his son is a conversation that black parents must have with their children to protect them from the racist excesses of the police. Not to mention, this is important because after black people experiences of America’s history of destroying their “black bodies” by being exploited through slavery and segregation, and the vulnerability on black bodies today, such as being threatened, locked up, and murdered. Coats makes a valid point about race being the child of racism and not the father. In other words, race is not an indubitable reality because it has been constructed, altered, and
The conflicts of racism has been an ongoing and pressing issue for many years. The world separating people based on color and ethnicities has created such a divide and struggle for human nature. Ta-Nehisi Coates, is an African American writer, journalist, and educator from Baltimore who writes about racial, cultural, social, and political issues that face African Americans in the United States. In his book, Between the World and me, he writes a letter to his teenage son who is 15 years old, named Samori. He explains to him about the struggles with racism that they face as African Americans, now that he is getting older and viewing these issue first hand. Coates uses many personal experiences and historical facts about this ongoing issue to
A common theme expressed throughout "Between the World and Me" is the issue of the racial divide. Coates explains what is considered "white" has changed so much with each new generation--there is no clear boundary. To discern who is truly white is an impossible task. Racism exists because those who view themselves as white, use those privileges to hold the "black body" accountable to subjugation. "Racism created race" (8). Society runs, based off of having the tiers of societal classes. Race ensures that there is always a lower class because it lays the foundation for the privileged to stand upon. This division is not something easily changed, because it cannot be pinpointed to one issue, therefore, it is like "finding a needle in a haystack." This idea is thought-provoking, and requires the reader to take a closer look at the evaluation he gives to race, and racism in
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about the conflict between the streets and the school system that young black Americans had to deal with. Coates describes how black people have to survive in their respective conditions in America before they ever even have the chance to escape the streets. The core principle of the culture of black Americans growing up in cities is primarily just to secure their body, and survive. Coates further goes on to describe the everyday conditions of the streets. He writes that no one survives unscathed. Any given day can essentially turn into a near death experience, and some people become addicted to this “thrill.” These were the people who turned their fear into aggression, and were the ones that were the threat to others.
Racism in the United States has not only been history in the past but history in the present as well. People think that racism is a way of controlling relations among whites. American society views whites with sanctioned privileges but denied to African Americans. In the article, “My Dungeon Shook” by James Baldwin, he writes a letter to his nephew in 1962 telling him how to handle the countrymen and how to survive the terrifying life he has as a black man. In the book, Between the World and Me by Ta - Nehisi Coates, he also writes a letter to his son about the role of racism in the United States and mainly focuses his letter on the destruction of the black body. Both Baldwin and Coates, write to their young ones at different times who are
In this narrative essay, Brent Staples provides a personal account of his experiences as a black man in modern society. “Black Men and Public Space” acts as a journey for the readers to follow as Staples discovers the many societal biases against him, simply because of his skin color. The essay begins when Staples was twenty-two years old, walking the streets of Chicago late in the evening, and a woman responds to his presence with fear. Being a larger black man, he learned that he would be stereotyped by others around him as a “mugger, rapist, or worse” (135).
In the enlightening novel, Between the World and Me, Coates vocalizes his unpopular opinion on living the “American Dream”. He utilizes the symbolism between “black” and “white” as well as life stories to expound on the flaws and dangers of the “Dream”. Coates views the “Dream” as “an enemy of aft, courageous thinking” and banal “white fences and green lawns”. Asserting that those aspiring after the “Dream” are mislead or oblivious.Through his childhood experiences, he demonstrates the life and mindset of those living in the “valley”. Explaining their overwhelming desire to pursue the “Dream” in order to break free of the endless cycle of poverty, fear, and violence. They climb the metaphorical “mountain” but only end up trading a life of fear
That was 1986. That year I felt myself to be drowning in the news reports of murder” (page 19). On the next page, he contrasts his grim reality with the white world that was “suburban and endless, organized around pot roasts, blueberry pies, fireworks, and ice cream sundaes” (page 20). The dissimilarity between the two also challenges the status quo, since in the status quo, people assume that everyone has access to the white world, while there is a gaping chasm between Coates’s world and the world of Dreamers. Coates “knew that [his] portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by a tenacious gravity, was black and that the other, liberated portion was not. [He] knew that some inscrutable energy preserved the breach” (page 20-21). The inscrutable energy, in this case, is the status quo’s element of race. By revealing the discrepancies between the idyllic Dreamer’s world and his own personal world, and showcasing the visceral fear and pain in his life that was propagated by institutional racism, Coates challenges the status
it's a piece of art, a recorded audio narrative that examines aspects of black culture ranging from physical appearance to “stereotypical” behaviors. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ New York Times bestseller Between The World and Me is essentially a literary replica of the album. The book has multiple messages itself, and asserts that the mindset of black Americans have a is institutionalized by white America, returning repeatedly to the fragility of the black body and the lingering impact of America’s legacy of slavery. The album and the book are different in some regards, but both offer persistent criticisms of the white “American Dream” and the degradation of black Americans upon which the Dream is built.
He hopes to prepare his son for his encounter on a steeper society, in which a black men getting killed on news is regular nowadays. Between the World and Me writer Ta-Nehisi Coates article of being black in America and America’s unwillingness to explore the origin of racial conflict. Even though he chose the book more than the streets, Coates still felt the fear while growing up and he still writes. Unlike many of his peers, Coates denied religion growing up; Malcolm X was like a Godly figure to him and the book The Destruction of Black Civilization became his bible. Coates questions himself about what being “black” in America means and understands that we are threatened everyday. Coates tells us that it is a fear of destruction and the fear of destruction goes through black neighborhoods, as showed in weapons, fights, police, and inflexible system. It 's like people have to worry about protecting their lives than excelling in life. Coates ' story is most importantly filled with his way to understanding. It 's the account of how he came to comprehend the displeasure of his family, his friends, the brutality of his environment. Coates does not want his son to go through the same things as him in life. It 's the story of how he accommodated
The Mountain Between Us is “a page turning story of love and survival,” as the front cover says. “Both a tender and page-turning read, The Mountain Between Us will reaffirm your belief in the power of love to sustain us,” the cover goes on to say. I believe that this book is both appropriate for and suitable as 4U audience class-room reading material. Thematically, the book does well to show the power of love in the midst of struggle. Despite describing in great detail the adventure of a lifetime, this novel does well to prove true love exists. I also believe that through analyzing this novel through a psychoanalytic lens and the reader response theory, this novel has many redeeming qualities for which it should be recognized. However, among the redeeming qualities, there are graphic descriptions that are not desirable for a 4U audience as a whole; for some people, the descriptions may be too realistic.