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Bezig met laden... Between the World and Me (editie 2015)door Ta-Nehisi Coates (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkTussen de wereld en mij door Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. I don't doubt or disagree with anything he said but it made me feel hopeless, racist and unaware of the extent of my white privilege and his black agony living here in a time of horror for people of other races. I bemoan his having to crush his son with the truths and experiences he has. I wish it were otherwise and that his writing the book would make it so. I want to read Baldwin's The Fire Next Time now since it too was constructed as a letter, a personal letter to a nephew, with the powerful talent of a truly great writer. From reviews and other secondary accounts, I'd gathered one of Coates's key positions here is that the American Dream is in fact a charade, allowing whites to continue abusing blacks even as they believe the reason(s) for the black nation's current situation lie entirely with the choices made / lesser capabilities of / beliefs held by those black people. After reading, this is indeed a major statement: the Dream relies upon exploitation, specifically that variant maintained by White Supremacists. And this particular Dream relies too upon complicity: depends upon those who benefit from it, allowing it to continue. "The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one's eyes and forgetting the work of one's hands." [98] Coates does not frame the point as the American Dream depending in principle upon racial terror in order to work, merely that it does so in fact. A key question for me, then: Is the American Dream feasible, workable for all people, without the underpinnings of racial terror or even racial inequality? (And: is racial inequality ever pragmatic without racial terror? They are separate, to be sure, but can the one effectively exist without the other, given human nature? To replace "racial inequality" with any other basis for inequality, remains substantially the same question.) // Rhetorically clever of Coates to address the essay to black people, and pointedly to his son. If economically successful, the book would be read by more white people than black, this would have been abundantly clear to Coates. I find myself on the margins of a conversation never addressed to me, yet just as clearly intended for me. The observations, criticisms, characterisations ... I can take offense, of course: readers always have open to them any reaction whatsoever. But a moment's reflection makes it clear, these barbs land only if I steer them toward myself. (A white body.) They were not thrown my way. It lends another layer of significance to any sufficiently self-aware reader. // Various quotes from Baldwin reinforce my intention to read his essays. "The people who believe they are white." [42, 133] Title borrowed from a Richard Wright poem, and Coates uses the opening lines as epigraph. These were new to me, and an ugly shock. I imagine they are familiar to many black Americans. Originally the idea was to create a review exclusively from selected quotations: my notes identify enough to do this, still would provide a worthwhile summary of the essay.
Between the World and Me is, in important ways, a book written toward white Americans, and I say this as one them. White Americans may need to read this book more urgently and carefully than anyone, and their own sons and daughters need to read it as well. This is not to say this is a book about white people, but rather that it is a terrible mistake for anyone to assume that this is just a book about nonwhite people. In the broadest terms Between the World and Me is about the cautious, tortured, but finally optimistic belief that something beyond these categories persists. Implicit in this book’s existence is a conviction that people are fundamentally reachable, perhaps not all of them but enough, that recognition and empathy are within grasp, that words and language are capable of changing people, even if—especially if—those words are not ones people prefer to hear. In the scant space of barely 160 pages, Atlantic national correspondent Coates (The Beautiful Struggle) has composed an immense, multifaceted work. This is a poet's book, revealing the sensibility of a writer to whom words—exact words—matter....It's also a journalist's book, not only because it speaks so forcefully to issues of grave interest today, but because of its close attention to fact...As a meditation on race in America, haunted by the bodies of black men, women, and children, Coates's compelling, indeed stunning, work is rare in its power to make you want to slow down and read every word. This is a book that will be hailed as a classic of our time. Werd geïnspireerd doorPrijzenOnderscheidingenErelijsten
"For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him -- most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear. What were they afraid of? In Tremble for My Country, Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings -- moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago's South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America's 'long war on black people,' or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police. In his trademark style -- a mix of lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, essayistic argument, and reportage -- Coates provides readers a thrillingly illuminating new framework for understanding race: its history, our contemporary dilemma, and where we go from here"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)305.800973Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people Ethnic and national groups ; racism, multiculturalism General Biography And History North America United StatesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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Coates structures the book as a pair of letters addressed to his son. Part memoir and part social commentary, Coates relates his experiences growing up as a black man in America, filtered through the lens of trying to impart the lessons that his son will need to stay safe. Between The World And Me focuses intensely on the body, and the ways that the bodies of black people have been used to fuel the American Dream for white people. It's a startling thing to read about in writing as powerful as Coates' is: what it must feel like to always feel like your body is at the risk of being broken.
As a relatively attractive woman, I'm familiar with the feeling of a body that doesn't quite belong to me alone, that others (and by that, I mean men) feel like belongs to them in a particular way. But it's use, rather than breaking, that's usually at issue there. Coates makes the feeling of constantly knowing that your body, and the bodies of those that you love, are targets for violence and rage simply for existing, visceral and real. Coates' love of and fear for his son, his desperate desire to somehow protect him from a world that will see him as a threat simply by virtue of his existence as a black man, is palpable.
This book has become a must-read for white liberals who want to learn more about race relations, a group into which I myself fall. I read an article before I read the book where Coates himself addressed the way his book has been received and expressed some frustration about being constantly asked about how he feels about the way white people have reacted to it. He wrote the book after a friend was murdered by the police, but the conversation hasn't been about police brutality. It's been about how to help white people better understand race. That should be a wake-up call, fellow Caucasians. It's not the job of people of color to make it easier for us to understand what they go through, especially when there is plenty of literature, like this book, that will help us to that work on our own. ( )