Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Between the World and Me
For the response to Ta-Nahesi Coates's book, Between the World and Me, you can respond to anything that you find interesting, as long as you focus on one idea. Here are some possibilities: you could consider how he defines race and racism, the contrast he sees between his son's life and his own, audience (his son and...?), the allusion to what he calls "the Dream," or the significance of the title (what is between the world and him? How is he defining "world"?) You are also free to choose other themes or recurring ideas in the text. The response is due on Tuesday, May 2, at 9:45 am.
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ReplyDeleteIn Ta-Nahesi Coates's book "Between The World In Me", the theme that I found to be most interesting was the theme of identity. This was represented throughout the book with Coates’s emphasis on the “body”. Throughout this unit, we have borne witness through literature to the abuse of the body. From the Holocaust, we read about the abuse that the Nazis regime inflicted on the Jews in the concentration camps, to the shooting of Japanese-Americans during the Internment, to the origins of physical and sexual abuse on the Golden Coast in "Homegoing". Through stories, we have experienced the cost of the body being dehumanized and renamed.
In Coates’ book, he is writing in an epistolary format addressed to his son. The main message I believe that Coates is trying to make to his son is the condition he will have to live in his given his body and how this will influence his identity. Coates poetically captures the nature of the body, in particular, the body of black men, through his own personal experiences growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, studying at Howard University, and later living in France.
Coates introduces the reader to the theme of identity (the body) at the very beginning of the book. A host of a news show asked Coates about “what it meant to lose my body” (pg.1). This question sets the framework for Coates’ letter to his son and provokes all the other themes and lessons within the novel. Coates states that “I tell you know that the question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life, and the pursuit of this question, I have found, ultimately an answer itself ”(12). Overall, this question is one of personal identity, specifically the condition the black bodies have to live under within The Dream.
In class we discussed the historical and controversial change agent Malcolm X. Malcolm X played a significant influence in Coates’ life growing up. The controversy in X’s ideology was primarily in response to his counterpart Martin Luther King Jr. X believed in protecting the body by all means necessary, this included violence and aggressive retaliation. In addition, X did not believe in the integration of blacks in the majoritarian culture-however, this view would later change. Nonetheless, due to the friction, Coates faced in regards to his body, whether on the streets of Baltimore or in school, the protection of the body (identity) encouraged him (and many others) to take ownership of their body. Coates notes that “Malcolm, always changing, always evolving toward some truth that was ultimately outside the boundaries of his life, of his body. I felt myself in motion, still directed toward the total possession of my body...” (48). Ultimately, throughout the letter, Coates recognizes that the cost of living in The Dream is always striving to obtain and preserve an essence of his body. As a result of this turbulent struggle, Coates moves to France so that his son may not inherit the consequences of this struggle. However, he encourages his son not to forget the “Struggle for the memory of his ancestors” (151).
In summary, Coates writes to his son about his own struggles in regards to maintaining the integrity of his body. Given the events that have taken place both in the present and past, we have seen a consistent pattern of the abuse of the body. The poem Emmett Till, by Wanda Coleman, captures the reality of the condition of the ambiguous identity that many of the “souls” of blacks living in The Dream face. She states, “The youth’s body too light was weighted down in barbed wire and steel dumped into the river agape a ripple a wave (once it was human)”. Overall, Coates responds to the question of what it means to lose his body by stating that, “Black life is cheap, but in America, black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value” (132). Unfortunately, the tensions of identity being treated as “cheap” yet a “natural resource” remains to be an unreconciled reality even today.
In “Between the World and Me”, Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks a good deal about “the Dream”, especially in pages 10-11. He describes the dream as “Memorial Day cookouts” and as smelling like “peppermint”, among other descriptions. This stands for his idea of an “ideal America” which is based on white principles that have been wrongfully set up on the backs of African-Americans in the US. “The Dream” benefits from the past and continual oppression of others which is an unfair system. “The Dream” cannot exist without the past, yet does not open up many opportunities for reconciliation between those two entities. Its presence serves as a reminder of the good in America: the safety, the community, the happiness, the peace; yet is ultimately built and thrives upon oppression, racism, and sorrow that still undermines our country. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, and Coates speaks of this sadness he has for his son because of the reality of that. It is sad to see some thriving at the disunity and sadness of others. It is a harsh reality that he brings up in the book, but it is necessary in a narrative about race. It is necessary that we create this dialogue and keep talking about the issues that plague our society so they are lessened and ultimately, eradicated.
ReplyDeleteIn Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, “Between the World and Me,” there are lots of apparent and compelling themes one can analyze. The book has much to say about identity, about race, and about America, but in my opinion, the most interesting theme of the book is the apparent failure of America’s police and criminal justice system to promote justice. Clearly, Coates is trying to get his point across that America has a hate problem, and hate is what fuels evil actions such as police brutality. But what is even more intriguing is that this police brutality is excused and taken for granted far too often.
ReplyDeleteRight from the start of the book, failure of the criminal justice system is mentioned. On page 11, Michael Brown is mentioned, “The men who had left his body in the street like some awesome declaration of their inviolable power would never be punished.” Stating the problem at the beginning of the book sets the pace for what is to follow. At the start of part II, Coates discusses the massive problems with police brutality in PG County. He talks about the dark history of the county, “And so I knew that the PG County police had killed Elmer Clay Newman, then claimed he’d rammed his own head into the wall of a jail cell. And I knew that they’d shot Gary Hopkins and said he’d gone for an officer’s gun. And I knew they had beaten Freddie McCollum half-blind and blamed it all on a collapsing floor. And I had reports of these officers choking mechanics, shooting construction workers, slamming suspects through the glass doors of shopping malls.” This paragraph is dense and gives a lot of information about the police system in PG County. The description of the killings is very visual. One can only imagine what abuse it would take to make a person look as if he had killed himself by ramming his head into a wall. It also is apparent how ridiculous these killings are. The excuse of a collapsing floor is ridiculous when someone was just beaten half-blind.
Coates goes on, “And I knew that they did this with great regularity…I knew that they shot at moving cars, shot at the unarmed, shot at the backs of men and claimed that it had been they who’d been under fire.” He then talks about his personal experience getting pulled over by these officers. He felt scared and knew that the officers had the ability to do whatever they wanted with him. There wasn’t even a real need for the stop (76). All of these scenes are shocking and bring realization to the fact that the police and criminal justice system in America is flawed.
Coates provides a particularly powerful example of police brutality and a failed criminal justice system on page 77. Prince Carmen Jones was a Howard student who was killed by the police, “He had been shot by a PF County officer…somewhere in Northern Virginia…The only witness to the killing of Prince Jones was the killer himself. The officer claimed that Prince had tried to run him over with his jeep, and I knew that the prosecutors would believe him.” The officer was clearly guilty of manslaughter, but he got off with no penalty, “They sent the killer of Prince Jones back to his work, because he was not a killer at all. He was a force of nature, the helpless agent of our world’s physical flaws.”
The sheer amount of examples where we see an epic failure of our criminal justice system is rhetorically convincing in “Between the World and Me.” Not only is the quantity of African Americans beaten and abused significant, but the reasons for these killings are often absurd and the penalty negligible. Prince Jones was completely innocent and a good student who was contributing to society, but he was still brutally killed. It is interesting and provocative to realize just how awful police brutality can be, and that was a central theme in Coates’ “Between the World and Me.”
What I found most interesting in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book Between the World and Me was the way that Coates used his past to show his development and the way his beliefs and ideals changed over time. What was especially interesting in this aspect was the manner in which he told the subject of the first letter, his son, about his time in college and how this affected and changed him. College is a very developmental time for everyone, and I think that this section will resonate will with the readers in our class because we are currently sharing in that developmental experience, in our own way. Not only does this section of the book explore the way that Coates’s ideals grew and changed through his college career and experience, but it helps the reader identify with him through their own college experience. Additionally, it gives the reader insight into Coates’s personal life, especially into how his son, the primary audience for the letter, was born, and helps us understand why he chose to write the letter in the first place.
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