Book Analysis of What is Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates, written by Muhammad Raza

 An Analysis of What is Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me is a short novel written by American author Ta-Nehisi Coates. It was published in 2015, and is written in the form of letters that Coates is writing to his son. The book offers a scorching review of how the United States exploits and discriminates against African Americans, even in a time when slavery has been long abolished and the law supposedly ordains equal rights to all. The novel contains multiple perspectives and a very nuanced analysis of the current situation of African Americans, which all help to explain the statement that is the title of this book: What is Between the World and Coates?

After reading Between the World and Me, I believe that the title of this book refers to how the “world”, which is to say the people in the world who are not African American, can never understand and experience the tragedy that is being black in America. This “distance”  or lack of understanding between the world and Coates serves as the pivoting point in this novel, and many of Coates's experiences outlined in the book are related to this claim. This encompassing theme is demonstrated in the first experience of this novel, in which a news show host asks him on a radio show why he believes the progress of America is built on the premise of looting and violence. Coates feels sad hearing this question because he believes that the historic exploitation of black people, his people, is a readily apparent answer to this question. This answer is not evident to everybody, however, as shown by the news reporter, because they have never experienced being black in America. In this same experience, Coates also demonstrates this idea through the use of a comparison: while the satellite closes the distance between the news show host and him, nothing could “close the gap between her world and the world for which I had been summoned to speak” (Coates 5). Furthermore, the book delves into great detail about Coates's experience of being black in America (which is shared by many other black people). He continually states that one wrong step, one misplaced gesture, one wrong word, or a simple lack of awareness could lead you to be wasted in America if you are black, which is something that the world will never understand. These analyses regarding Coates's novel are why I believe that the title refers to the inability of non-African American people to understand the hardships and difficulties faced by their African brothers on a daily basis.