![]() ![]() Indeed Coates wrote another book-length memoir about his youth on Baltimore’s streets a decade ago. The baby’s mother and father have already bypassed the streets phase that imprinted itself so vividly on Ta Nehisi Coates. ![]() Our child will have a non-Black bodied mother and a Black bodied Nigerian father. In many ways, on the other hand, our baby will not be like Ta-Nehisi Coates’ son. So, we may have a boy who, will be walking a path through life much more like that of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ and his father than like Douglas DeCelle and his father. My daughter and son-in-law have elected to be surprised on birthing day at the gender of their baby, with whom Jenny and I will have a parenting role. ![]() This is because the child about to be born into our family will have a black body, to use Coates’ expression. It’s on this point that I, a 67 year old White male, cannot treat Between the World and Me as simply an interesting window into Black experience. ![]() The point of the book is to urge his son into his own version of that struggle. Coates sees his life’s story as a beautiful struggle to make sense out of, and in some way to defeat, the racism that is a permanent part of America’s soul. “If you’re Black, you were born in jail.”Ĭoates has found ways to expose the enduring presence of racism with fresh images and words that Toni Morrison has said fills the void left by James Baldwin. ![]()
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