Between the World and Me

'The powerful story of a father's past and a son's future. Coates offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son's life...this moving, potent testament might have been titled Black Lives Matter.'

Kirkus Reviews (starred)

‘A searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today...as compelling a portrait of a father–son relationship as Martin Amis's Experience or Geoffrey Wolff's The Duke of Deception, and a showcase for Mr Coates's emotional reach as a writer and his both lyric and gritty prose.’

New York Times

‘Between the World and Me is a love letter written in a moral emergency, one that Coates exposes with the precision of an autopsy and the force of an exorcism...Coates has written a book about immense and ongoing failures of humanity that is a triumph of humanism in itself, a book that renders the injuries of racism brutally near and real.’

Slate

‘Part memoir, part diary, and wholly necessary...Coates’s knives are deadly, and they strip away the fat from truths passingly familiar to many but lived by only a few. It is an indictment.’

New Republic

‘Brilliant…[Coates] is firing on all cylinders, and it is something to behold: a mature writer entirely consumed by a momentous subject and working at the extreme of his considerable powers at the very moment national events most conform to his vision.’

Washington Post

‘Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me is in the same mode of The Fire Next Time; it is a book designed to wake you up.’

Guardian

‘[An] uncategorizable tour-de-force...Between the World and Me feels as personal as a published work can. Sprawling, discursive, angry, relevant, lyrical...an unrelenting frank work expressed so perfectly that the truth of it resonates with every word.’

Shelf Awareness

‘Between the World and Me is both a meditation on life in a country that weaponizes black skin and a rigorous examination of what Coates calls the Dream - the pernicious American concept of whiteness, fuelled since the days of the Middle Passage by the destruction of black bodies... a brilliant primer on the experience of black maleness in America and the man-made structures that shape it.’

Globe and Mail

‘This work, which won the National Book Award in nonfiction, is something to behold: a mature writer entirely consumed by a momentous subject and working at the extreme of his considerable powers when national events most conform to his vision.’

Washington Post

‘Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me is the one book you should read if you only read one book in the next couple months...Coates will leave you gasping with awe at the beauty of his language, even as you digest the bleakness of his message.’

GQ

‘One of the most powerful pieces of writing I’ve ever read…Within the first few pages, I was swept up by Coates’ fierce intellect and raging passion as though I’d stepped into a fast-moving current. I read with my heart in my throat and for the final 50 or so pages I cried without stopping. Between the World and Me attests to the power of literature.’

Readings

‘A furious, impassioned, elegiac letter to his young son about the meaning of inhabiting a black body in modern America. It’s my favourite book of this year, quite possibly this decade.’

Aminatta Forna, Australian

‘I have just this second finished Ta‑Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. It made me cry – for racism, inhumanity, and the plain fact that we are one planet and one people.’

Jeanette Winterson,, Guardian