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4.54 AVERAGE
4.54 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Eloquent and heavy. It feels like going for a swim in a Muskoka lake. It gives you goosebumps and feels cold in a good way. Slowly you wade in never really prepared for what it is. And the water feels heavy but fresh. The weight absorbs you and brings you along. You don't float like in the ocean but instead have to tread water and work for the swim. It's an incredible experience even if bracing. And I'll never forget it.
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
I will never claim to know what it means to be a black person in America but this book has opened my eyes and my mind to beginning to understand (not know, but understand a little) in ways I never realized possible. Coates is a poet and an educator. He translates. And his words flow like rivers that carry you with them and the pages fly by.
right in his words about america, wrong in his evaluation of hope.
reflective
fast-paced
Gorgeous from start to finish.
When addressing the current climate of race, Ta-Nehisi Coates dishearteningly relies on the history of America and his own experience to an inescapable truth: The black body is set up to fail by the system. From the streets on which they live to the education they receive to the blindness by the system, black lives are working from severe disadvantage from the start.
Though there have been improvements throughout civil rights over the past century, there is something so dark and binding beneath the surface - untraceable to the naked eye. I am white and male, so I do not see the sickness every day, if at all.
This is the reason I read books*. This is the reason I listen to music, which is why I appreciate Coates weaving in the music of Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Aretha Franklin, and many other artists who had something to say about such matters.
If we are to get where we want to go as a people, we're going to need all hands on deck, which is why I've never understood why the powers-that-be suppress others. I guess they don't want to relinquish power, which, in that case, they deserve something this world can't give them. I still feel that, if humans spent time lifting every and anyone up with education and resources, we could be halfway across the galaxy, discovering new realities, barbecuing with Martians, and truly making the universe a better place. But I guess being stranded here until we rot is fine, too.
I think of the worst people in history, many of which will dance around the news this very night. They will never be "mistakenly shot." They will never spend more than a day in jail despite ruining countless lives ($$$). They will never fear for their lives when walking home from school. I would recommend this book to those specific people, but they would refuse to read it, or else would deny its innards.
They are the system. And anything that goes against the system does not exist in their world. And that's where we are.
.*I'd like to find a book of equal or greater magnitude for every other minority, just so I can better understand the plight of my fellow man and woman - please recommend some if you have them.
When addressing the current climate of race, Ta-Nehisi Coates dishearteningly relies on the history of America and his own experience to an inescapable truth: The black body is set up to fail by the system. From the streets on which they live to the education they receive to the blindness by the system, black lives are working from severe disadvantage from the start.
Though there have been improvements throughout civil rights over the past century, there is something so dark and binding beneath the surface - untraceable to the naked eye. I am white and male, so I do not see the sickness every day, if at all.
This is the reason I read books*. This is the reason I listen to music, which is why I appreciate Coates weaving in the music of Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Aretha Franklin, and many other artists who had something to say about such matters.
If we are to get where we want to go as a people, we're going to need all hands on deck, which is why I've never understood why the powers-that-be suppress others. I guess they don't want to relinquish power, which, in that case, they deserve something this world can't give them. I still feel that, if humans spent time lifting every and anyone up with education and resources, we could be halfway across the galaxy, discovering new realities, barbecuing with Martians, and truly making the universe a better place. But I guess being stranded here until we rot is fine, too.
I think of the worst people in history, many of which will dance around the news this very night. They will never be "mistakenly shot." They will never spend more than a day in jail despite ruining countless lives ($$$). They will never fear for their lives when walking home from school. I would recommend this book to those specific people, but they would refuse to read it, or else would deny its innards.
They are the system. And anything that goes against the system does not exist in their world. And that's where we are.
.*I'd like to find a book of equal or greater magnitude for every other minority, just so I can better understand the plight of my fellow man and woman - please recommend some if you have them.
emotional
reflective
Coates writes to his son: "I did not tell you that it would be okay, because I have never believed it would be okay. What I told you is what you grandparents tried to tell me: that this is you country, that this is your world, that this is you body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it" (11-2). This is not a book that taxes itself with the burden of making people feel better. Rather, it shows the many ways life is more dangerous, unfair, painful, complex, and beautiful than may be immediately evident.
In a helpful metaphor that spans the entire book, Coates refers to the people who "believe they are white" as "the dreamers," who maintain and benefit from an imagined, essential distinction between people with and without power. Black people, meanwhile, are responsible not only for keeping their own black bodies safe, but also must account for the worst actions of other people who look like them. Yet, while their place in the world is more precarious than that of those who believe they are white, at least, when they wake up in the morning, they truly wake up, while the dreamers dream on.
Once again, this is not consolation for the violence against black bodies and the unfair responsibilities thrust upon them. Rather, it is a way of framing black power. Despite living in reality in the context a society dominated by a dream, despite substantiating the "below" that gives meaning to a hypocritical "sacred equality" (104), "We have made something down here" (149).
In a helpful metaphor that spans the entire book, Coates refers to the people who "believe they are white" as "the dreamers," who maintain and benefit from an imagined, essential distinction between people with and without power. Black people, meanwhile, are responsible not only for keeping their own black bodies safe, but also must account for the worst actions of other people who look like them. Yet, while their place in the world is more precarious than that of those who believe they are white, at least, when they wake up in the morning, they truly wake up, while the dreamers dream on.
Once again, this is not consolation for the violence against black bodies and the unfair responsibilities thrust upon them. Rather, it is a way of framing black power. Despite living in reality in the context a society dominated by a dream, despite substantiating the "below" that gives meaning to a hypocritical "sacred equality" (104), "We have made something down here" (149).
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
This is an invaluable book. The format—a heartfelt and at times urgent letter from father to son made the book that much more powerful. This is a book I’ll need to sit with for a while before I can succinctly express how it impacted me. As the mom of two black teens, this definitely cut to the core. Overall this is a book I would recommend to anyone who wants to better understand the experience of being black in America.