📚 An exploration of race in America. Between the World and Me is framed as a letter from author Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son, which sees the acclaimed author dive into the experience of being Black in a country marked by a long and ongoing history of racialized violence and exploitation.

For Coates, race is a social construct that acts as a keystone of the American political project. He details how racial difference has been used to justify the oppression of Black people throughout American history — from slavery, to modern forms of police brutality, and beyond. He expands on all the different ways Black people have been controlled, commodified, and endangered in the country’s history, with an eye to subverting the US’ self-mythologizing as “land of the free.”

The letter format makes the book resonate powerfully, with Coates’ lessons for his son expressing poignant and at times painful truths about the very act of surviving as a Black person in the US. In the book’s most oft-cited passage, Coates writes, “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage.”

You can find it at Diwan.

Tags: