BOOK REVIEW: Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me, as many likely already know by now, takes the epistolary form—specifically, that of a series of letters from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son regarding what the elder Coates believes his son needs to know as a black, male, teenager who will hopefully make it to being a black, male, adult without being too sufficiently wounded emotionally, psychologically, socially, nor culturally, in the process.

I read this book through the many inner and outer understandings and experiences of both myself and the world into which many generations of my ancestors lived; into which I was born, have lived, and continue to live. I read it through multiple and varied intelligences and perspectives. I read it through the eyes and heart of the fifty-five year old black man that I am—a man who can deeply identify with the voices of pain, angst, and grief through which Ta-Nehisi Coates principally speaks with throughout the book. I read it through the eyes and heart of the spiritual teacher that I also am—a teacher who teaches the deep, and I believe fundamental and necessary importance of understanding ones experience of this world through taking calculated ownership over ones very life—always and relentlessly looking within to understand the deepest essences of ones existence through that said life. I read it through the eyes and heart of being both a contemplative and a sacred activist who cogently understands injustice, greed, hatred, corruption, violence, sexual exploitation, and all manner of global depravity, and yet also as one who understands the often deeply mysterious powers of love, forgiveness, and redemption, etc.

For me, in general, the narrative of the book teeters largely between bleakness and hopelessness with Coates’ recounting of his time at Howard University (The Mecca) being among the rare and also most prominent respites he takes from this.

However, before I am accused of being haplessly addicted to hope or of not understanding the limitations of being eternally, blissfully hopeful, I want to quickly acknowledge that I have been a student of the teachings of Buddhist master, The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, for more than two and a half decades now. Among the voluminous teachings that have been birthed into the world by this prolific writer and well-respected Buddhist monk are his teachings around the concept he simply refers to as, “hope as an obstacle.”

And so both Thich Nhat Hanh and I as well, are incredibly aware of the fact that for many of us hope can very easily become that which erroneously and often foolishly separates us from the inconvenient and difficult brutality of not only what has occurred in the past, it can also blind us to what may be happening in the world around us right now, this very moment, keeping us from being truly intimate with the present moment, if that present moment is providing us with experiences we don’t like or that we find uncomfortable or deeply distressing. I also understand that all of that precious hope out there may be twisted into something that provides us with an excuse for escaping into a believed “hopeful” future and simultaneously into a place that is not even real, because the future never is, due to the fact that we cannot control what horrible, twisted, or “unfair” horrors our hope-filled and dreamlike future existence may naturally and effortlessly morph itself into.

Between the World and Me gives us a lot of truths to ponder—real, visceral, sometimes agonizing, sometimes very difficult to read, and quite often very inconvenient yet nonetheless provable truths. It does not however, always give us the whole truth and nothing but the truth in many of those same instances.

One somewhat annoying and standout example of this for me is the Malcolm X Ta-Nehisi Coates presents us with. Coates references and praises Malcolm X several times in the book. At one point he declares his love for Malcolm X which is presented very much like the expressions of love a devoted mentee might have for a beloved mentor. It is also not unlike some presentations of the love a student has for his or her beloved guru or spiritual guide, in various Eastern traditions. Coates’ complete disappearance however, of Malcolm X’s involvement with the Nation of Islam, the impact on Malcolm X of both the real, flawed human as well as the projected divine personage of Elijah Muhammad and his teachings, the importance of Brother Malcolm’s trip to Mecca late in his life, and most importantly, how each of these formed the foundation of his initial and subsequent political, religious, and cultural rebirths—was a little much for me to simply, blindly accept.

If one were to read Between the World and Me and have no prior knowledge of Malcolm X, one would walk away from the reading having no idea that Malcolm X was even a Muslim, much less a devoted disciple of Elijah Muhammad for an important portion of his life. Ta-Nehisi Coates seems to have remade Malcolm X in the image of Ta-Nehisi Coates, which is to say he seems to have given us Malcolm X the staunch and essentialist atheist. Here is a quote that seems to reflect this, that particularly struck me, “I loved Malcolm because Malcolm never lied, unlike the schools and their façade of morality, unlike the streets and their bravado, unlike the world of dreamers. I loved him because he made it plain, never mystical or esoteric, because his science was not rooted in the actions of spooks and mystery gods but in the work of the physical world.” Huh?

Coates’ deep and telling truths though not of the whole truth and nothing but the truth appeared to be something of a theme of the book, for me. Here is another quote from Coates that comes near the end of a prolonged narrative approximately twenty pages from the end of the book. The narrative consists of two and a half pages in which he recounts the partial stories of and circumstances around several very familiar names, some less unfamiliar, all black men murdered at the hands of law enforcement officers in the USA: “As slaves we were this country’s first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country’s second mortgage.” When I initially read that I had the exact same reaction I just had as I typed those words, which is to say, I wonder what many of this country’s First Nations people, whose stolen land, broken treaties, and attempted ethnic cleansing this country is at least partially built upon, might have to say about that. In some ways it might seem nit picking to mention something like this. However, there are numerous moments like this in the book. At some point, for me, they collectively began to add up in ways I found negatively impacted my enjoyment of the book and more importantly, my trusting of Coates and his motives for some of what he says.

Here, in this next quote, Coates is describing how no one in America would be considered racist if we left it to the racists themselves or the defenders of racists, to define that word: “In 1957, the white residents of Levittown, Pennsylvania, argued for their right to keep their town segregated. As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens,” the group wrote, “we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.” This was an attempt to commit a shameful act while escaping all sanction, and I raise it to show you that there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it as such.” Truth, truth, truth, truth, truth. What he fails to tell us however, is that social science research tells us very clearly that virtually no one, regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, place of residence, or virtually anything else, wants to believe that any dastardly thing we/they do, is evil. We all have some way, some form of twisting all our dastardly deeds in some fashion as to somehow justify them. This is not a black nor white trait. All the current evidence points to this being a human trait. This is the whole truth here or at least it’s more of the truth than Coates gives us. To his credit Coates immediately follows that above quote up with a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—a quote that very strongly agrees with what social science tells us about this topic—that doing evil and pretending one is in reality doing something good or justifiable is a human trait, a human flaw. However, Coates then immediately follows that Solzhenitsyn quote up with retreating back towards presenting this as a uniquely white trait. He just can’t get out of his own way, it seems. It’s as if he wouldn’t know who he was if he allowed himself to just get out of his own way.

I noted more than a half dozen other examples of Coates telling us what I considered to be clear, poignant truths, yet him also simultaneously not telling us the wider, broader, more fully contextualized, nuanced, or plain old whole truth. I noted all of them in the copious notes I took while reading the book for the second time. I don’t feel the need to list all of them here. Doing such would nearly become the entire book review if I did so. As I’ve said, collectively, they began to add up for me, negatively impacting my trusting of Coates’ and his motives.

Here is my slight tweaking of a well-known Shakespearean quote from Hamlet that for me, more or less summarizes my experience of Coates’ tendency of telling half-truths throughout the body of the book: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Ta-Nehisi Coates, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Otherwise, beyond what I have stated so far, I mostly enjoyed the book, see the book as having merit, and I will continue to view Ta-Nehisi Coates as a skillful, insightful, and necessary voice in today’s world. I believe that voice is an important one and I hope he has more things to say and easily accessible formats in which to say them in. I still do not agree with Toni Morrison’s much commented on praise for this book complete with its, to me, hyperbolic allusions to James Baldwin and such. I essentially agree with Cornell West and what he has publicly stated about this. She, of course, is entitled to her opinion. She’s also an alum of Howard University, the same school Coates attended though did not graduate from. And she is also mentioned and acknowledged, very briefly, at least twice in Between the World and Me. So there’s also that.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is now quite wealthy I imagine, propelled into this economic state of existence through royalty checks from this very book as well as the monetary perks from several of the awards he has more often than not, in my opinion, rightfully deserved—the 2015 nonfiction American Book Award being an exception to that, in my view. He is also several months into a yearlong residency in France. I am sincerely happy for him regarding all of this. However, I cannot help but wonder whether or not these rather significant developments in his life and perhaps others along the same lines that I do not know of, have impacted, even a little bit, that rarefied space in any significant way, that exists, between the world and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

NOTE: When applying amazon.com’s starred system, I would assign this book 3 out of 5 stars.