​“Between the World and Me” is written by a journalist, educator and writer; Ta-Nehisi Coates. This book is a form of letter written to his son Samori about what is like to be a black man in America. The author starts by telling his personal story about growing up as a black man in Baltimore and how dangerous was his surroundings. Coates mentions about Queen Nzinga and her bravery stories, which inspired him. Coates attended Howard University, which he refers as “my Mecca”.
Coates read lots of book and he usually stayed at the research center, where his grandfather worked. By seeing different people in university, Coates felt less worried about racism. The author started to get more involved in books and finding new vocabulary words. During the university time, he learned about the black history and tackle his unfit understanding of black history. Coates started to figure out how black bodies lacked value and respect in America and can be killed or destroyed in any random act. Coates attended poetry reading and met lot of young writer like him. Coates struggled everyday about his identity and blaming him for not doing anything to change the society. Sometimes he felt like taking break, but he thought about Malcom, which was his favorite writer. He felt classroom was like a jail and library was the only place for him because it was open minded and full of various information. He started to more and more involved in reading and writing during that phase.
During his school time, he met Samori’s uncle Ben, who had a same thought about like the author did. the author found library as a place of freedom compare to the classroom. Coates started to feel uncomfortable by his knowledge and started to think more beyond the Howard. After various of research, he reveled that many people were considered part of black history but in the lowest number possible. Coates felt very hard to believe on the fact that he saw and felt like there is a lot of struggle being in a black body. The author started to participate in different lectures, poetry reading and book signing events. He stared to write poetry which he considered as bad poetry and presented at open mics in local café, populated by older and wiser people than him. He talked about Dream that thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions. Coates started to learn about how certain things can hurt him as he moves forward. During this poetry time one of the older poets introduced him to an artist like Bubber Miley, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, C.K. Williams, Carolyn Forche, which pulled the energy from the void.
The author felt mentioning their names because they played a big role in his life. Coates also mentions about the lines from Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage”, the author was real touched how he could bring joy and agony without literally writing the words. The author admires the works done by Hayden because he learned the craft of poetry. The author describes poetry as not only simple transcription of notion but beautiful writing that can touch millions of hearts. He thinks that poetry is the way of processing he thoughts until the slag of justification. Coates wrote lots of poetry which came up from different places including small things which came from his families and cities he is been through. The poetry carried a lot about the truth of black body, and the cruelty faced by most black people. The author was also in shocked after the dead of his friend, which made him even more conscious about the surrounding he is living in. Coates also mentions about of the little chance that dreamer will make slowly and will see changes in coming up days. Coates followed as the poets and followed his dream and argued about the current situations. He also learned to live in the disquiet which he felt in Moorland-Spingarn in his mind.
He was not really impressed by the society dealing with the black people and how judgmental they can be. The author wrote this book as knowledge to his son, so that he can understand the reality of the world towards the diversity.