Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me is a relational memoir addressed to his son that reflects on Coates’ life in the broader context of being an African-American male. It is interesting to note how Coates structurally writes the text; he does so by setting the text up as a letter. The letter structure does a few things that are very important for the message that Coates is trying to send. He is making his personal narrative into political speech by using his experience as a black man in urban America and documenting the marginalization and injustice he felt. He also shows a family dynamic; a deep bond and connection to his son that cannot be unbroken.

Contemporaries such as Nobel Peace Prize winner and author Toni Morrison have compared what Coates has done in his text to be akin to James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (Wallace-Wells). Baldwin’s text was set up much the same; addressing similar racial problems in America to his nephew. Coates indeed has said that the similarities of his and Baldwin’s text are “essentially literary” and while served as an inspiration, Coates felt compelled more specifically after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri to write his memoir (Wallace-Wells). The impact of these two pieces are important, both texts ended up becoming New York Times best sellers and have had large impacts in American literature.

This could be said because of how Coates and Baldwin use their personal experience and turn it into a political endeavour; stemming from a long genre of autobiographies that use their positions in order to call for change. In the American context, one of the earliest texts that did as such is The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass (Bennett 242). Douglass, a freed slave and eventually one of the first major African-American statesmen in the 19th century, writes about his experiences growing up and uses his position as a former slave to fuel the broader abolition movement, which in turn eventually allows him to see the end of slavery and the beginning of a new era of race relations before his death in 1895 (241).

While it remains seen whether or not Coates’ memoir will have the same impact as Baldwin’s or Douglass’ texts both in the literary context and the political context, Between the World and Me has already given some thought to modern race relations today. It is being read in classrooms throughout the US as a book suitable within the high school Common Core curriculum, with Common Core being the basic educational standards many states follow (Penguin Random House Audio). While not only a popular read, it has also seen the furthering and mainstreaming of the Movement for Black Lives, which calls for an acknowledgement of police brutality and the injustices black people face in the US, with similar calls and a similar origination as Coates’ text.

Works Cited

Bennett, Nolan. “To Narrate and Denounce.” Political Theory 44.2 (2016): 240-64. CrossRef. Web.

“Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates | Teacher’s Guide.” Penguin Random House Audio. Web. Mar 4, 2018 <http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/teachers-guide/220290/between-the-world-and-me/>.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.

Wallace-Wells, Benjamin. “The Hard Truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates.” Daily Intelligencer. -07-13T01:00:00.000Z 2015. Web. Mar 4, 2018 <http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/07/ta-nehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me.html>.