Between the World and Me, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates takes inspiration from which James Baldwin book?
Between the World and Me Between the World and Me is a 2015 book written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by Spiegel & Grau. It is written as a letter to the author's teenaged son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being black in the United States. Coates recapitulates American history and explains to his son the "racist violence that has been woven into American culture." Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore, detailing the ways in which institutions like the school, the police, and even "the streets" discipline, endanger, and threaten to disembody black men and women. The work takes inspiration from James Baldwin's 1963 "The Fire Next Time". Unlike Baldwin, Coates sees white supremacy as an indestructible force, one that black Americans will never evade or erase, but will always struggle against.
James Baldwin James Arthur "Jimmy" Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer and social critic. His essays, as collected in "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America. Some of Baldwin's essays are book-length, for instance "The Fire Next Time" (1963), "No Name in the Street" (1972), and "The Devil Finds Work" (1976). An unfinished manuscript, "Remember This House", was expanded upon and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award-nominated documentary film "I Am Not Your Negro".