Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me is written as a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son about what it means to be Black in the United States. Coates retells American history and describes the racist violence he sees as woven into American culture. He draws on his own youth in Baltimore to show how schools, the police and the streets discipline and endanger Black men and women. The title comes from a poem by Richard Wright.