Would feeling uncomfortable in your own skin be upsetting? Well if you read the book “Between The World and Me” it will show that some people have it hard just because of the color of their skin. As the author of this book writes about his fifteen year old son who had to grow up and learn how to live an American life with different skin. The author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, learns the way of the neighborhood he grew up in, how to survive a hard life, and how do what has to be done. Coates is the author of the story who grew up in a rough suburb area in Baltimore. His parents where always tough on him so he knows what he's gonna face in the real world. He grew up to be a famous author writing the book “Between the World and Me”. Throughout this …show more content…
Most of his education took place at Howard, where he learned more about powerful black men and of his past. One powerful man he studied, was Malcolm X. Coates loved Malcolm X and he is very scared about his son growing up in an America that looks down on African Americans, and shows that there isn’t much in America standing up for them. Now for his son in the book he is a young man growing up in a White America at the age of fifteen. He is still trying to understand why people are hating on him for not being the same …show more content…
Coates shares with his son the story of the truth about American culture through experiences from Howard University, to Baltimore. From his childhood home to the rooms of where children’s lives were taken way too soon, and as America fell apart. But learning about the history gets rid of the past, and embraces the present, and looks forward to future. Being comfortable in your own skin takes a lot of courage and bravery if you are being treated the way Coates and his son were being treated. After reading this book I realized that it was hard growing up with a different style skin, and how different you go treated. This book was not for me, because of how non-advanced I am in reading. It was difficult to keep track of what was going on and I would only recommend this book to the higher level of education or
In his opinion, life in the white community is like a dream, since there were no discrimination, no oppression, no threats for violence etc. He expressed the idea that it was impossible for the white people to give up this dream and they would do whatever necessary to defend it. “The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.” Coates believed that the root to all the unfortunate events were because of the country’s leadership. America had benefitted from slavery and many other policies that were discriminating against African Americans, yet the leaders failed to recognise the contributions they had made for this
...eir lifehave felt and seen themselves as just that. That’s why as the author grew up in his southerncommunity, which use to in slave the Black’s “Separate Pasts” helps you see a different waywithout using the sense I violence but using words to promote change in one’s mind set. Hedescribed the tension between both communities very well. The way the book was writing in firstperson really helped readers see that these thoughts , and worries and compassion was really felttowards this situation that was going on at the time with different societies. The fact that theMcLaurin was a white person changed the views, that yeah he was considered a superior beingbut to him he saw it different he used words to try to change his peers views and traditionalways. McLaurin try to remove the concept of fear so that both communities could see them selfas people and as equal races.
In Hayslip’s book When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, she talks about her life as a peasant’s daughter and her and her family’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War has not only affected Vietnam itself, but also the United States, where in the beginning they did not want to get involved. However, with the spread of communism, which had already affected China, the president at the time Lyndon Johnson, thought it was time to stop the spread of the Vietnam War. With America’s involvement in the war, it caused great problems for both sides. In Vietnam, it causes the local people from the south and north side to split up and either becomes a supporter of communism or of the US’s capitalist views. In addition, it caused displacement for those local people, thus losing their family. In America, the Vietnam War has brought about PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, and deaths of many soldiers, more than World War II. With the thought of containment for communism, the US had gave back Vietnam their war and “gave up” on the war, leaving Southeast Asia in the sphere of communist views. With the thought of the domino theory that a country will fall in similar events like the neighboring countries, like China as Vietnam’s neighbor the United States tried to remove communism from Vietnam. US’s involvement in the war caused problems for both sides of the war.
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
This book also shows me that the influence of friends is very strong. It makes him try to be like other black Americans which imitate the white. It can be seen when he did the conk too. It is a very clear example that he also wants to be like the white.
“I want to get it right,” he said. “After making the mistake in the last book about how long it takes to get from Toronto to Detroit, I want this one to be watertight. So just go along with me until I’m sure that it’ll work.”” he is portrayed throughout the story to be superior, yet he is killed by his wife with his own plan that he created because he was cheating on his wife with another women. Mrs Coates, starts her story as believed to be less intelligent than her husband but proves the theory wrong by turning his own plan against him, her and her husband have been known to be similar in appearance, and also similar in personality. This makes the story a tad outlandish because if the couple was so similar why would he cheat on her, and why would he plot to kill
What I liked most about this book was the reality it revealed. It showed how brutal and cruel the society was. This book made me realize that racism is deeply embedded in the life and history of the nation, and it still exists in today’s society.
Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me discusses the issues black people have to deal with in America on a daily basis by expressing his point of view to his son in a letter. He begins by explaining his years when he was just a kid and already seeing the fear in his black neighborhood, by the way they talked, walked, and by the way the parents beat their children. As he grows up he tries to look for an outlet, look for people that understand his situation, and that is when he starts to attend Howard University, where his mind began to open. But even after he left Howard University, he continued to have this fear for world until one day his good friend Prince Jones was robbed of his body by a white officer, and instead that fear turned
Ta-nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me is a powerful piece of literature that highlights both the beauty and trauma of the black life in America. Coates discusses the struggles he endured while growing up in poverty as well as his enlightening experience at Howard University. By showing both the positive and negative experiences of a black man in America, Coates provides an intriguing perspective on the racial disparities in the U.S. as well as the influence of an institution like Howard University.
He offers the reader insight for which s/he can reflect with and, ideally transpire discussion. The father’s letter to his fifteen year old son, outlining the cruel realities of the world in which they live, represents a greater concept practiced by blacks in America: the teaching of racism. In most cases, as exhibited by the real life scenario recounted in this book, black children learn racism at a young age from their parents, who, given their years and experiences, fear for their childrens’ lives on an unsurpassable level. Coates recounts his childhood, describing his awareness that “not being violent enough could cost [him] his body. Being too violent could cost [him] his body” (Coates, Page 28). The author speaks of how he, first-hand, witnessed the parental teachings of race to children in the black community, explaining that fathers who slammed their teenage boys for sass would eventually send them off into the streets, where they would be greeted to the same justice, and that mothers who belted their girls attempted to do the same, but unfortunately were unsuccessful in saving these girls from drug dealers twice their age. Ta-Nehisi Coates comes to recognize and accept the fact that the law did not protect blacks in Baltimore and it was time for him to adjust and survive or
Obama, a major symbol for the Black community, is not exclusive to Black people, like Michelle Obama would’ve been. He belongs to the White community, to the ‘nowhere man’ community, to the immigrant community. Coates himself sees himself as first and formost a Black man. Moreover, perhaps that this makeup challeneges Obama in understanding how to elevate Black America, because it is the part of him that is the farthest away. If anything, Iyer described it best. Obama, while being able to appeal to a wide vareity of people, is like a nonaligned nation. Thus for the average Black man, the appeal is not as bright to others, and the identification can only resignate so
In her work, “This is Our World,” Dorothy Allison shares her perspective of how she views the world as we know it. She has a very vivid past with searing memories of her childhood. She lives her life – her reality – because of the past, despite how much she wishes it never happened. She finds little restitution in her writings, but she continues with them to “provoke more questions” (Allison 158) and makes the readers “think about what [they] rarely want to think about at all” (158).
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
Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This Earth of Mankind is an allegorical novel describing the growth of protagonist Minke during the pre-awakening of colonized Java. Set in 1898 during the period of imperial Dutch domination over all aspects of Javan life, the novel provides a clear image of the political and social struggles of a subjugated people through the point of view of a maturing youth. Using several of his novel’s major characters as allegorical symbols for the various stages of awareness the citizens of Java have of Indonesia’s awakening as a modern nation, Toer weaves together an image of the rise of an idyllic post-colonial Indonesia with modern views of Enlightenment ideals.
Urvashi Butalia in her book, The Other Side of Silence, attempts to analyze the partition in Indian society, through an oral history of Indian experiences. The collection of traumatic events from those people who lived through the partition gives insight on how history has enveloped these silences decades later. Furthermore, the movie 1947 Earth reveals the bitterness of partition and its effect of violence on certain characters. The most intriguing character which elucidates the silence of the partition is the child, Lenny. Lenny in particular the narrator of the story, serves as a medium to the intangibility created by the partition. The intangibility being love and violence, how can people who grew up together to love each other hate one another amidst religion? This question is best depicted through the innocence of a child, Lenny. Through her interactions with her friends, the doll, and the Lahore Park, we see silence elucidated as comfort of not knowing, or the pain from the separation of comfort and silence from an unspoken truth.