TOW #4 - IRB Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an African-American,  award winning writer and educator. He grew up in West Baltimore and studied at Howard University. Coates primarily addresses cultural, political, and social issues in the U.S. In the first half of Between the World and Me, Coates begins his letter to his son and attempts to delve into the unanswerable question: “How do I live free in this black body?” (12). The book is a letter to his son David, who is becoming aware of the tragedies many young black boys like him  face. Coates writes in order to help his son start his own journey of investigation of the answer to his question and also to enlighten his son and others of the history of African Americans. To do this, Coates tells his own story. While Coates primarily writes to his son, he also writes to anyone who can relate, and those who seek more information in their own investigation for answers. In order to enlighten his son on the plight of African American people, Coates uses emotional anaphora and thought provoking metaphors.

When detailing his memories of watching videos in grammar school of the Civil Rights Movement, he writes, “The black people in these films seemed to love the worst things in life—love the dogs that [rip] their children apart… love the men who raped them… love the children who spat on them” (32). Coates’s repeated us the word “love” emphasizes the number of troubling things in the lives of African Americans. It puts emphasis on how ingenuine the video seemed. Also, the irony between the word “love” and the negative event after it creates a depressed mood in the reader. The combination of the emphasis and the mood created gives Coates’s son a feeling similar to what Coates felt in grammar school. The combination allowed his son to feel the history rather than just learn it. In order to help create a vivid picture of the past, when describing his experiences in West Baltimore, Coates writes, “North and Pulaski was not an intersection but a hurricane, leaving only splinters and shards in its wake” (22). His tone and use of metaphor gives his son a more genuine account of what life was like for him. Coates does not want to sugar coat his stories because they weren’t sugarcoated when he was experiencing them. The raw realness of Coates’s account even further allows his son and others to understand the history.