Reading Order
Between the World and Me Reading Order
Between the World and Me (2015) by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a letter to his 15-year-old son Samori — a book written in the tradition of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963), explicitly acknowledged, using the epistolary form and the personal voice to make a moral and political argument about what America does to Black bodies. Written in the immediate aftermath of the Ferguson uprising and the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, the book is simultaneously a meditation on Coates's own life (his Baltimore childhood, his time at Howard University, his friendship with Prince Jones — a Howard classmate murdered by police), an argument about American history (that the destruction of Black bodies is not an aberration but the foundation on which American prosperity was built), and a letter of instruction to his son. Between the World and Me became one of the most discussed books of the decade — it won the National Book Award, appeared on The New York Times bestseller list, and was called 'required reading' by President Obama. It also provoked controversy: critics from the left argued that Coates's pessimism (he does not believe America can be reformed, he does not believe in progress) was politically disabling; critics from the right argued that his account of American history was one-sided. But the book's achievement — the prose, the argument, the moral seriousness — is not reducible to the debates it provoked. It is one of the best works of American nonfiction of the 21st century.
Where to start
Between the World and Me — any Spiegel & Grau edition. It is a short book (about 150 pages) that can and should be read in one sitting.
Complete Between the World and Me Book List
- 1Buy
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates·2015·The book — the letter to Coates's son about what America does to Black bodies, from Baltimore childhood through Howard University to the killing of Prince Jones; the 21st-century successor to Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. - 2Buy
The Beautiful Struggle
Ta-Nehisi Coates·2008·Coates's first book — his memoir of growing up in Baltimore; the autobiographical predecessor to Between the World and Me that provides the childhood context the letter draws on. - 3Buy
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin·1963·Baldwin's essay masterpiece — the explicit predecessor; the letter to nephew form, the moral argument about what America must do, and the measured but devastating prose that Between the World and Me inherits and updates. - 4Buy
Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin·1955·Baldwin's first essay collection — the further back predecessor in the personal essay tradition; the account of the dying father and the Harlem riot that establishes the method Coates uses. - 5Buy
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois·1903·Du Bois's foundational essays — the older predecessor in African-American nonfiction's account of what American racism does to the Black mind and spirit; the tradition Coates is explicitly writing from. - 6Buy
Black Boy
Richard Wright·1945·Wright's autobiography — the rage and the self-education that Between the World and Me descends from; the earlier account of what it costs to be Black and intelligent in an America determined to prevent it. - 7Buy
The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander·2010·Alexander's analysis of mass incarceration as a racial caste system — the analytical companion to Coates's personal-essay argument; the structural argument for what Between the World and Me narrates in terms of individual experience and loss. - 8Buy
Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi·2016·Gyasi's multigenerational novel — the fiction companion published the year after Between the World and Me; the historical argument for Coates's claim that the destruction of Black bodies is not an aberration but the foundation of American prosperity.
Between the World and Me — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Between the World and Me about?
Between the World and Me is a letter from Coates to his son Samori, written in 2014-2015 in the immediate aftermath of the Ferguson uprising and the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and other Black men by American police. The book is structured in three parts. The first part deals with Coates's childhood in Baltimore — the Black body's vulnerability to street violence and police violence, the 'beautiful struggle' of his upbringing. The second part deals with his time at Howard University, where he discovered the full complexity of African-American history and culture, and with the death of his friend Prince Jones — a Howard classmate who was shot by a police officer. The third part is a meditation on the permanence of the American racial situation and a letter of instruction to Samori about how to navigate it. The book's title comes from a poem by Richard Wright.
What is Coates's central argument?
Coates's central argument is that the destruction of the Black body — through slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration, and police violence — is not an aberration in American history but the foundation on which American prosperity was built. America's wealth, its middle class, its infrastructure, were built on the labor of enslaved Black people and on the subsequent expropriation of Black wealth. The racial violence of the present is not a deviation from the American dream but one of its preconditions. This argument leads to Coates's pessimism: he does not believe America can be reformed through education or moral argument, because the problem is not ignorance or prejudice but the structural interests that racism serves. He does not offer his son a way out — he can only offer him knowledge.
How does Between the World and Me compare to The Fire Next Time?
Coates explicitly acknowledges Baldwin's The Fire Next Time as the model for Between the World and Me — the epistolary form (letter to a family member), the personal voice, the moral seriousness, and the account of what America is and has been are all deliberately inherited. The differences are also significant: where Baldwin writes in hope (his conclusion is that America can save itself through love, through confronting what it has done), Coates writes in a more pessimistic mode; he does not believe in transformation, he does not offer his son a redemptive conclusion. The pessimism is, in part, a response to what happened after the hope that Baldwin expressed in 1963: fifty more years of American racial politics, including the civil rights legislation and the subsequent backlash, the election of Barack Obama and the subsequent election of Donald Trump, have left Coates skeptical of the kind of hope Baldwin maintained.
What is the significance of Prince Jones's story?
Prince Jones is a Howard University classmate of Coates's who was shot and killed by a plainclothes police officer in 2000. The killing was by all accounts unjustified (the officer shot Jones after a prolonged car chase that ended in a different jurisdiction), and the officer was not charged. Jones's death is the emotional center of Between the World and Me: the loss of a specific, beloved individual whose life was destroyed by the police without consequence is Coates's argument made flesh. The account of visiting Jones's mother, the former radiologist who raised Prince Jones and who must now grieve him, is one of the most powerful passages in the book. The 'plunder' of Prince Jones's life — to use Coates's vocabulary — is the concrete instance of the larger historical argument.
What should I read after Between the World and Me?
After Between the World and Me, Coates's The Beautiful Struggle (2008) is the autobiographical predecessor and The Water Dancer (2019) his first novel. For the tradition Coates belongs to, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963) and Notes of a Native Son (1955) are essential. W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Richard Wright's Black Boy (1945) are the older predecessors. Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow (2010) provides the analytical framework for Coates's historical argument. Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy (2014) is the legal companion.
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