Home - Open Books Open Minds - Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates - James P. Adams Library at James P. Adams Library

Call for Papers

Open Books - Open Minds

Student Conference on "Between the World and Me"

Friday April 13, 2018

OBOM STUDENT CONFERENCE. CALL FOR PAPERS!

The conference keynote speaker this year is Angie Thomas , author of the bestselling novel The Hate U Give, the 2018 book selection for Reading Across Rhode Island. Ms. Thomas will be speaking to a "sold out" audience in Gaige Hall (and in overflow sites elsewhere on campus) on April 13th, 2018.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahisi Coates

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

2017/2018

Open Books--Open Minds

Common Book

"In a profound work that pivots from the most pressing questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of an African American father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s painful racial history and our current civil rights crisis. Americans have built an entire society on the idea of “race,” a false construct whose ramifications damage us, but fall most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion to their number in the population. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?" -- The Publisher

Selected Book Reviews

Alexander, Michelle. "Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between the World and Me,’" New York Times Book Review, Aug. 9, 2015
"Whether you agree or disagree, one of the great joys of reading Ta-Nehisi Coates is being challenged in ways you didn’t expect or imagine."
The Atlantic. "The Brutality of a Country," Responses to Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me
Responses to Between the World and Me and other related writings from the Atlantic
Hagen, Molly "Between the World and Me."Magill's Literary Annual, 2016
Between the World and Me is an argument for the value of black bodies—the tangibility of the word “body” as opposed to the word “life” is a touchstone of Coates’s argument—and a chronicle of Coates’s intellectual coming-of age.
Mayer, Jeremy. "Reading Coates, Thinking Obama," American Interest, vol. 11, no. 2, 2015, p91+
"It attacks the intellectual tradition from which Obama gets his inspiration, that of non-violence and Dr. King. Coates is a black nationalist, and these pages, along with his earlier memoir, make clear that his model is much more Malcolm X than King."
McCarthy, Jesse. "Love’s Austere and Lonely Offices," Nation, vol. 301 no.23, 2015, p14+
"Coates is not only a witness with a story; he is a celebrated essayist, polemicist, and commentator on public affairs. His words are read as part of a greater debate about the state of black politics and social life. It is therefore appropriate, I think, to engage his writing in those broader terms."
O'Donnell, Patrick A.. "Still Dreaming," America, vol. 214, no. 9, 2016, p. 32+
"In many ways, Ta-Nehisi Coates's painful and deeply truthful Between the World and Me is an extended articulation and update of Baldwin's conviction that the domination of blacks is endemic to the American Dream, that "the Dream" sustains itself insofar as it rests "on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies," as Coates writes. "
Stephens, R.L. "The Birthmark of Damnation: Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Black Body." Viewpoint Magazine, May 17, 2017 (online)
"Coates’s descriptive language and haunting narrative are not mere metaphors. They act as an ontological pivot, mystifing racism even as it is anchored in its physical effects."
Williams, J. Corey Andrew. "Between the World and Me," Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 55, no.11, 2016, p.1004+
"Coates tells stories in a memoir style using language that is accessible to non-academic audiences but that still maintains a high level of intellectual rigor. The relevance to child psychiatry lies in the implications for how race, identity development, and parental socialization may influence mental health outcomes, particularly among adolescents. This book should be mandatory for all child psychiatrists, particular those who regularly treat African-American children in metropolitan areas."
Wycliff, Don. "The fire this time." Commonweal, vol. 142, no. 20, 2015, p. 22+
"TaNehisi Coates's ... view of things is relentlessly pessimistic and downbeat. This is only partly the result of the reality he sees and describes. It is mostly because of Coates's approach to that reality and all of life: he is a secular observer in a secular age."

Open Books Open Minds - Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates