Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Slim in size but so vast in its importance, Between the World and Me is a letter from @tanehisipcoates to his teenage son — a letter that ultimately tells the story of race in America, within the framework of this most intimate of relationships. 

In this renowned National Book Award Winner, the author depicts what it was like to grow up in a black body, a body that was under attack, on the streets of Baltimore. Howard University became his Mecca, a place where he was shaped and formed and where the black world expanded before him. Through visceral, strong and powerful language and words that are quite magnificently woven together, the roots of racism and the situation in America today — as well as the toxicity of the American ‘Dream’ — are literally laid out before readers.

‘Difference in hue and hair is old’, Coates writes at the beginning, ‘But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible — this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe they are white.’ 

This is not an easy book to read; it is scholarly, profound and emotionally charged — you could analyse every sentence that it’s made up of. However, we have no doubt that it is absolutely vital reading, whoever and wherever you are in the world today — and it will continue to remain so, long into the future.

~ Sophie & Chaya