I lived in the Philly suburbs a few years ago, so WHYY was my source for NPR radio shows. When I first moved down there, and for 3 full years, I worked second shift. I got to hear radio shows that played in the middle of the day. Tell Me More was one of my favorites. I don’t know what it says about me (I’m oblivious?) that for years I never realized that it was about/by African Americans. I guess it was the power of […]
Between the World and Me
There’s been a lot of buzz about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and I’m late getting on that train. This is my book club’s latest pick and after reading it, I think the discussion will be one of the best discussions we have had. To start off with, I think the choice to frame this book as a letter to his son was a brilliant choice. As the discussion was framed as a discussion rather than a lecture/speech/argument, I feel that readers can […]
“be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world”
I’ve always been of the Reading Rainbow school of reading; “Take a look, it’s in a book.” Want to grow a garden? Better get the book. Feeling a little blue? Self-help book. World’s most strong-willed son? Book, book, book, (basically the whole parenting section). Whole country’s gone to hell, and I’m a white woman living in suburbia? What do I do? How do I make sense of this? I read. I ordered this on the day Philando Castile was killed with a baby in the […]
I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.
Between the World and Me has quickly become required reading for many people and I can see why, particularly in today’s troubling world. Under the advice of my sister I got a copy of the audiobook so I could fully live Coates’ words. Written as a letter to his fifteen year son, following the Michael Brown verdict, Between the World and Me is pure poetry. Short, passionate and beautiful. “My work is to give you what I know of my own particular path while allowing you […]
“This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.”
Oh, this book. This book, you guys. “But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” Between the World and Me is a letter […]
This is a [white] man’s world
If you’ve picked this book up, you probably already know about Ta-Nehisi Coates, or have read his work on The Atlantic before. It’s hard to be sure because I live outside of the US, but based on my casual observation, Coates has become more prominent and publicized during this final Obama administration. Part of it may be due to his incredible long-form piece published two years ago, The Case for Reparations (if you haven’t read this, go. Read it now. Come back to my review later.); but I believe […]
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