Between the World and Me Summary and Analysis

Chapter 1 Summary

The opening chapter of Between the World and Me is introduced by an epigraph from a poem entitled “Malcolm” by the contemporary American writer and educator Sonia Sanchez. Addressing himself to his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates begins the narrative with an anecdote recalling an interview he gives to a television news show host. The host asks what it means to lose your body. In his response, Coates directly links such an event with the whole of American history. He explains that the political definition of “the people” in America has historically excluded Black people. The concept of race, he asserts, is the outgrowth, or child, of racism. He defines racism using descriptive imagery: it is “the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them.”

Coates continues, referencing a number of controversial cases involving the violent deaths of African Americans. The most notable are the cases of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Both deaths occurred in the summer of 2014. Garner died after police officers placed him in an illegal chokehold in Staten Island, New York. Michael Brown was shot to death in a confrontation with police in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. For many, Brown’s case was especially shocking, since the killers escaped punishment. Coates recalls that his son, Samori, left the room at their home and burst into tears after he learned this outcome.

“How one should live within a black body,” Coates declares, is the abiding question of his life. His thoughts range back to his childhood in Baltimore when his early years were overshadowed by fear and violence. Coates saw fear everywhere in this setting—hearing it in the music from boom boxes and sensing it in his father. Coates learned that death “could so easily rise up from the nothing of a boyish afternoon.” Street violence taught Coates that he had to shield and protect his body. He mentions the death of another Black youth, Trayvon Martin, a teenager who was fatally shot in 2012 in Sanford, Florida. The assailant was George Zimmerman, a white neighborhood watch volunteer. Zimmerman was later acquitted on a charge of second-degree murder. The highly controversial trial and verdict soon led to the foundation of the social movement Black Lives Matter.

Coates next compares the streets and schools of his youth. If the streets instilled fear, the schools were most interested in compliance, he says. Using a metaphor, he calls them “arms of the same beast.” Yet Coates discovered his life-long inspirations as he grew: first in books, which his father loved, then in the figure of Malcolm X, and finally in study at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Howard opened an exhilarating new world Coates nicknamed “the Mecca,” for the combination of Howard’s history, location, and roster of ultra-talented alumni. He especially admires the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center for its extensive library, where Coates’ father worked for some years. He begins to realize that the purpose of his education is the uncomfortable process of stripping America of its myths—most notably that of “the Dream.”

Coates next devotes attention to two new experiences at Howard: his first romances and his increasing interest in writing, especially the art of journalism. The last girl Coates falls in love with is Samori’s mother, who comes from Chicago. The couple have a child when Coates is 24 but decides not to marry for some time. Before this romance, Coates has a relationship with a girl with long dreadlocks. This character’s open attitude teaches Coates a lesson in tolerance. Also notable is the object of her deepest affections, a tall, handsome, Black student at Howard named Prince Jones, who Coates hints will be killed. Coates admires Jones for his generosity, kindness, and charisma.

Coates describes his interest in journalism and how publishing his writing helps him to explore his questions. Toward the end of Chapter 1, Coates focuses on his son, Samori, the recipient of his letter. He points out that the idea of “struggle” is deeply rooted in the boy’s name, which derives from Samori Touré (1830–1900), a war chieftain of West Africa who led a resistance against French colonization in the 19th century. Touré also struggled to maintain the right to his black body. Coates devotes the concluding paragraphs to the implications he discerns in the concept of “struggle.” He exhorts Samori not to yield to despair; on the other hand, the boy must maintain a clear-eyed perspective as he struggles to maintain ownership of his Black body.

Chapter 1 Analysis

The verse excerpt by Richard Wright that serves as the epigraph to Coates’ work provides important insight into Coates’ title, Between the World and Me. In Wright’s poem, the speaker describes the horrific moment when he encounters in the woods the remains of a man who has been lynched. The victim is referred to as “the thing,” whose “sooty details” rise between the speaker and the world—as the speaker imagines himself being tarred, feathered, and burned the same way. It is this grisly reality of American history, more than any other, that tinges Coates’ perspective as he explains to his son the fear he has carried throughout his life.

In addition to the book’s overall epigraph, Coates prefaces each of his three chapters with a quotation related to the subject matter that suggests the writer’s tone and major themes. The epigraph to Chapter 1, from poet Sonia Sanchez’s “Malcolm,” foreshadows Coates’ admiration for Malcolm X and his appreciation for the example the Black Muslim leader set. Like Malcolm X, Coates says he owes the “reclamation” of his body to books. Using descriptive imagery, Coates say that if he had fashioned a flag to carry in his youth, “it would have been embroidered with a portrait of Malcolm X.”

From the very beginning, Coates emphasizes the concept of the Black body. Protecting this body from harm is the chief responsibility of every Black individual, male and female. The burden of securing one’s body falls especially heavily on males, however. Coates’ anecdotes of his experiences on the Baltimore setting of his youth bear eloquent testimony to this major theme. Naturally, he is especially concerned that his only son, Samori, grasp and internalize this necessity.

Coates’ discussion of Eric Garner’s and Michael Brown’s violent deaths introduces his concept of “the Dream.” Associated with the white majority, “the Dream” is derived from the proverbial “American Dream,” referring to the generations-old aspiration for improvement, respectability, and material success. Coates glosses the term as meaning “treehouses and the Cub Scouts,” reducing it to a hollow, self-centered cliché: a conformist aspiration that prizes uniformity and materialistic values. As the book unfolds, it turns out that, for Coates, “the Dream” is not only an illusion but a vehicle for the suppression of Black people. He associates it with suburbia, segregation, and economic inequality between the races.

In describing the students at Howard University, Coates briefly references Caribbean psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (1925–61): “Some of the boys… beseeched these girls by citing Frantz Fanon.” Coates’ familiarity with Fanon’s work—which presents education as a way to change racist attitudes—can be seen in his discussion of Howard, the first educational institution to offer him refuge, solace, and fulfillment. Coates uses the metaphor of “the Mecca” to describe the school, after the large city in western Saudi Arabia that lays undisputed claim to be the holiest place in the Islamic world. The birthplace of the prophet Muhammad (570–632), it became the center of Islam after his death. According to the five holiest “pillars of the faith,” every Muslim who can is enjoined to undertake a pilgrimage, or “hajj,” to Mecca at least once in their lifetime. By calling Howard University “the Mecca,” Coates draws attention to the institution’s elevated standing as a fruitful center for higher learning as well as its status as a cosmopolitan meeting place—in Coates’ words, “the crossroads of the black diaspora.” As a confessed atheist, admiration for education is the closest Coates comes to religious feeling.

The final pages of Chapter 1 deserve careful scrutiny. In his exhortation to his son, Coates emphasizes the overtones of the boy’s name: Samori. Coates stresses the idea that struggle is the youth’s key imperative. Coates carefully distinguishes the idea of struggle from the concept of despair. He does not expect either victory or reparations for past exploitation here, although scholars of his body of work will note his advocation for reparations in a 2014 article in the Atlantic. But he does hope Samori will remain true to his responsibility to take his place in the ranks of the committed. Notably, Coates’ first published work was a 2010 memoir entitled The Beautiful Struggle.