Book club
Between the world and me
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an award-winning US-American writer and journalist who is known for works like “Fear of a Black President” or “The Case for Reparations”.
quick & compact
This is a must read and not only because it is an Award Winning Book. It is intriguing and touching your heart from the beginning to the end. You will have goose bumps on your body because you are reading into the soul of Ta-Nehisi Coates.
1 Big Idea
The big idea of this beautiful touching book is not an idea but are questions: What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
2 inspiring quotes
“You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.”
“I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”
3 actionable takeaways
Purpose: Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer touching and very relevant questions in a letter to his adolescent son.
Action: what would your letter to your son sound like? Think deep….what purpose, wisdom or what thoughts would you like to pass along…into the future?
Stories: Coates shares with his son—and readers—the stories of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage
Action: What would your stories look like? Which events where really ground breaking to you?
Inclusiveness: between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward. Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding America’s history and current crisis. “Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion.”
Action: What action could you take to be more inclusive and open to the reality of racism?