“I have been wondering who could fill the intellectual void that befell me after the death of james baldwin. clearly it is ta-nehisi coates. the language of between me and the world, like coates’ journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. and his examination of the dangers and hopes of black men’s lives is as insightful as it is revealing. this is required reading.”—toni morrison
“powerful and passionate. . . deeply moving. . . a searing meditation on what it means to be black in america today.”—michiko kakutani, the new york times
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“really powerful and moving.”—john legend, the wall street journal
“extraordinary. . . [coates] writes an impassioned letter to his teenage son, a letter both loving and fearful from a father, advising him on the history of American violence against the black body, the extreme vulnerability of the young African American to wrongful arrest, the police violence, and disproportionate incarceration.”—david remnick, the new yorker
“brilliant. . . A fascinating meditation on the state of race in America. . . [Coates] is firing on all cylinders, and he is a sight to behold: a mature writer wholly consumed by a momentous subject and working to the extreme of his considerable powers at the precise moment when national events most suit his vision.” —the washington mail
“an eloquent blend of story, reportage and memoir written in the james baldwin tradition with echoes of ralph ellison’s invisible man. . . It is less a typical memoir of a particular time and place than an autobiography of the black body in America. . . . Coates writes tenderly, especially of his wife, son and extended family, and candidly. . . . Coates’s success, in this book and others, is due to his innate lucidity and dignity, his respect for himself and for others. he refuses to preach or disparage white readers or beg them to accept him: he never wonders why we can’t all get along. he knows that government policies make getting along nearly impossible.”—the boston globe
“For someone who proudly calls himself an atheist, Coates offers us a lot of ‘can I get an amen?’ in this slim, essential volume of family gaiety and rigorous wrestling. . . . [he] has become the most sought-after public intellectual on the issue of race in America, for good reason. between the world and me . . . it is both a magnification and a distillation of our existence as black people in a country in which we were not meant to survive. it is a direct tribute to our strength, endurance and grace. . . . [coates] speaks resolutely and vividly to all of black america.”—los angeles times
“a crucial book at this time of generational awakening.”—the new yorker
“a work that is both titanic and timely, Between Me and the World is the latest essential reading in the American social canon.”—weekly of entertainment
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“coates offers a beautiful lyrical call to consciousness against racial discrimination in the united states. . . . between the world and me is in the same mode as fire next time; is a book designed to wake you up. . . . an exhortation against blindness.”—the guardian
“Coates has written a deeply moving and moving letter to his own son. . . . [her] book of hers is a compelling mix of history, analysis, and memoir. Between Me and the World is a much-needed artifact for documenting the times we live in [from] one of the leading public intellectuals of our generation. . . . the experience of having a wise old man speak directly to you in such lyrical and beautiful prose, a language brimming with insightful thought and love of black life, is a beautiful thing.”—the root
“full of love, sadness, anger and struggle, between me and the world traces a path through the American glove both for the black child who will inevitably walk the world alone and for the father black who should let that kid go.”—newsday
“Moving, revealing and extremely wise, Between Me and the World is an essential wake-up call to our collective consciousness. we ignore it at our peril.”—san francisco chronicle
“masterfully written. . . powerful storytelling.”—new york post
“one of the most fascinating and moving books to appear in a long time. . . The book reaches a level of clarity and eloquence reminiscent of Ralph Ellison’s classic Invisible Man. . . . the perspective [coates] brings to American life is one that no responsible citizen or serious scholar can safely ignore.”—foreign affairs
“urgent, lyrical and devastating in its precision, coates has written a new classic for our time.”—vogue
“powerful”.—the economist
“a work of rare beauty and revealing honesty. . . Between the world and me is a love letter written in a moral emergency, which Coates exposes with the precision of an autopsy and the force of an exorcism. . . . Coates is frequently praised as one of the most important American writers on race today, but this, in fact, understates him: Coates is one of the most important American writers on the subject of America today. . . . [he is] a scholar whose breadth of knowledge on subjects ranging from literature to pop culture to French philosophy to civil war seeps into every page of his book, distilled in profound moments of discovery, immensely scholarly but never ostentatious.”— blackboard
“the most important book I’ve read in years. . . an enlightening, uplifting, educational and inspiring experience.”—smithsonian asian pacific american center
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“is an indescribably illuminating, infuriating, and important document about being black in America today. coates is perhaps the best we have, and this book is perhaps the best he has ever written.”—deadspin
“vital reading right now in america.”—u.s. world news and report
“[coates] has created a highly provocative narrative, carefully presented and beautifully written. . . . Much of what Coates writes may be difficult for most Americans to process, but that is the incisive wisdom of it. read it, think about it, take a deep breath and read it again. the spirit of james baldwin lives within its pages.” — the christian science monitor
“part memoir, part diary, and totally necessary, it is precisely the document this country needs right now.”—new republic
“a moving testament to what it means to be black and American in our troubled times. . . Between Me and the World feels of the moment, but like James Baldwin’s famous 1963 treatise Fire Next Time, it will become a classic on the subject of race in america.”—the times of seattle
“fascinating. . . Coates delivers a fiery soliloquy that dissects the tradition of erasing African Americans beginning with the deeply personal.”—minneapolis star tribune
“[Between Me and the World] is not a coming-of-age memoir about how idyllic life was growing up in America. it’s raw it’s scorching. . . . [is] a book that should be read and shared by all, as it is a story that painfully and honestly explores the age-old question of what it means to grow up black and male in America.”— el sol Baltimore
“a scathing indictment of America’s legacy of violence, institutional and otherwise, against Black people.”—chicago tribune
“I know that this book is addressed to the author’s son and, by obvious analogy, to all children and youth of color who are inexorably at risk. I hope I will be forgiven, then, for feeling that ta-nehisi coates was speaking to me too, father to father, teaching me that true courage is the courage to be vulnerable, to admit missing the mark, to remain open and curious in the face of hate and lies, to remain skeptical when there is so much comfort in easy belief, to recognize the limits of our power to protect our children from harm, and, most difficult of all, to see how the burden of our need to protect becomes a burden to them, a burden that we must, sooner or later, have the wisdom and the terrible courage to surrender.”—michael chabon
“ta-nehisi coates is the james baldwin of our era, and this is his cri de coeur. a brilliant thinker at the peak of his powers, he has distilled four hundred years of history and his own anguish and wisdom into a prayer for his beloved son and an invocation to the conscience of his country. Between Me and the World is an instant classic and a gift to all of us.”—Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Heat of Other Suns
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