30 April 2017 "The Successes and Failures of Between the World and Me"

In the beginning of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates presents a quote from Richard Wright, poet and renowned author of Native Son: “And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly upon the thing/Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks and elms/And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me” (Coates, 1). This quote aptly sums up the main point of the work, giving the reader context to the title and presenting a succinct description of all that is to come. It recognizes the invisible and visible nature of all that can separate the individual (in this case, the black man) from the rest of his environment. Known for his tendency to ask the difficult questions of his readers, Coates’ most recent work (Between the World and Me) is written as a letter addressed to his son, presenting lessons learned and exploring the deep breadth of the black male identity.

The inclusion of another author’s work as a predecessor to his own writing is typical of Coates’s style—besides the introductory quote to the book as a whole, Coates also includes secondary quotes beginning the individual sections of Between the World and Me. For the first section, he includes a quote from Sonia Sanchez:
“Do not speak to me of martyrdom/of men who die to be remembered/on some parish day./I don’t believe in dying/though, I too shall die./And violets like castanets/will echo me” (Coates, 4). In the second and third sections, he includes quotes from Amiri Bakara and James Baldwin, two prominent African American writers who explore the unspoken complexities of the American black racial identity. These quotes provide additional, personalized written evidence of the complex nature of the black American identity, and serve to augment Coates own story.

This theme of using other authors to amplify his own arguments can also be seen in two of his most well known pieces for The Atlantic: “The Case for Reparations” and “My President Was Black”. Unsurprisingly, these magazine articles are heavily centered on the black identity within the context of extensive interview/research about an influential black individual. More surprisingly (and contrary to his book) none of these quotes are from famous African American authors; rather Coates uses quotes from the Bible, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and John Locke. These introductions are no less synoptic; rather they demonstrate some key differences between Coates’ writing for The Atlantic and his writing in Between the World and Me.

From the very first page, it is evident that the style within Between the World and Me is extremely abstract, though the opening scene is focused on a concrete moment in which Coates participated in an interview with a popular news host. How can one who has lived his entire life without control of his body explain what it means to a woman who unknowingly holds his body in her hands as she speaks? Coates transitions into the irrationality of race and racism, that the recognition of race is inherently racist in itself, and laments his failure to express himself to a news show host who might never have wished to understand him in the first place.

A bit contrary to the writing in his Atlantic articles, the writing in Between the World and Me is conceptual, referencing abstract ideas like the American Dream and the Mecca through the careful crafting of images. Coates invents sweeping phrases that include both fact and opinion, such as “those who believe they are white” (Coates, 58). It’s the kind of writing that really makes one stop and think more deeply about what she is reading. Sentences blur into one another in a way that demonstrates the hectic nature of life within the constraints of the black body.

This is quite different from what I have read in Coates’ magazine writing for The Atlantic. In both “The Case for Reparations” and “My President Was Black”, Coates does extensive research on an individual in the hopes of recreating an accurate persona on the page—in “The Case for Reparations” it’s Clyde Ross, influential member of the Contract Buyer’s League in 1960s Chicago; in “My President Was Black” it’s Barack Obama, the (at the time) newly former President of the United States. In both pieces, the in depth depiction gives way to a broader issue involving the complexity of the black person in regards to the United States—but this issue is not so much presented alongside abstract ideas like those in Between the World and Me. Instead, it is, in a sense, more easily digested, not in regards to the subject matter, but in regards to the stylistic presentation.

I hadn’t read anything by Ta-Nehisi Coates before reading Between the World and Me, but I had heard about him, mainly through glowing recommendations from one of my friends. I read the book quickly, and was quite interested to hear feedback, especially from one of my classmates regarding her confusion and difficulties with the conceptual creations that Coates brings forth onto the page in Between the World and Me. Most notably, my classmate had difficulty with the idea of a person “believing themselves to be white”—what exactly does this mean? I was quick to explain to her: to be white means to never have had to consider the experience of being another race—not in a malicious way, but rather in the way that a white person is able to focus his time on other aspects of his identity, race is simply not a factor. To be white means to be invisible, in a way that to be black can never mean.

I have a very specific racial experience—I’m a quarter black, meaning that I have one half-black parent and one white parent. My relatives on my dad’s side are a colorful mix of skin tones, and they each have their own personalized experience with how they’ve grown to understand the world. I have only recently come to understand myself as a non-white person, and reading Between the World and Me came at the perfect time for me—it was easy for me to connect to the more abstract concepts because I had an inherent understanding of the invisible power of race. 

My lack of trouble connecting this concept with my personal experience, I didn’t understand at first, was a privilege of my own. I had not considered, until my classmate brought it up, the difference in reading experience that an individual with as unique a racial history (and as unique an understanding of race) as myself would have with this work compared to an individual like my classmate, who simply had not been exposed to the same things before reading. This begs the question: how effective is this work in communicating to a larger, less specialized audience? And when compared to his writing for the Atlantic, does the stylistic variation make all the difference?

When reviewing Between the World and Me, literary critic for the New York Times Michiko Kakutani laments the lack of attention given to the identity of the black American woman, and the exclusive focus given to the black American man. While this accusation has its share of fairness, it is not entirely appropriate to condemn Coates’ work when at its core it was created as an extended letter from father to son. In this case, the singular inclusion of the black male American identity does not take away from the effectiveness of the work as a whole—the lack of existence of one person’s specific identity does not subtract from the reader’s ability to gain positive insight to the experience of another.

However, I would instead argue that the specific, raw, abstract, and condensed ideas presented in this work as a tool to bring the reader into a personalized experience of identity, though important to the method overall, do take away from the work’s effectiveness in communicating with a larger audience. How can one who has never needed to take the time to understand such an experience be expected to pick up meaning presented in a way so nuanced? I don’t blame my classmate for not understanding ideas as complicated as believing oneself to be white—two years ago I probably would have had trouble understanding this concept as well. I hadn’t been exposed to the type of conversations that lead to an increased understanding of the intricacies of the racial identity, and had I read Between the World and Me then, I certainly would not have picked up on as much as I did.

This begs the question of exactly who Coates’ intended audience is for this work. Though clearly his son, Coates is not entirely clear about whom exactly he desires to read and get meaning from this work. In an interview with CBS, Coates explains: “But no, I’m going to write what I’m going to write, and what happens after that is really not up to me” (CBS News). So it’s left to the reader to guess at whether a lack of understanding in those who can’t connect to the identity set forth in Coates’ work actually does illustrate a lack of effectiveness in regards to the work itself. Does the work represent a failure of Coates to relate to an audience greater than that which he knows? Or does the struggle for outsiders (in this case, those without access to the experiences referenced in Between the World and Me) to grasp the abstract concepts represent a struggle that is, in a way, deserved? Personally, I would argue for the latter. Arguably, Coates is one who would craft a literary (and often extended) experience geared toward forcing some readers into a realm of confusion and discomfort, in the hopes of giving them a better understanding of an identity crafted from unfairness and inequality.

So where does the difference in effectiveness lie in Coates’ writing for The Atlantic and his writing in Between the World and Me? Is Coates’ style limited by the constraints of The Atlantic’s audience, or is his change to the outright abstract in Between the World and Me deliberate because a work addressed to his son, a person who has shared the experience of the black body?