In honor of Black History Month, we’ll be reading Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future. The author 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. Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, “a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked, but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, “one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” Its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons. After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered. Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”

For adults