Summer Read: Between the World and Me

The Antiracism Task Force is recommending Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, Between the World and Me for a Summer 2020 church read. The book is in the form of a letter written by an African American man to his fifteen year-old son. The writing is realistic and lyrical, truthful and poetic. The Antiracism Task Force felt that this book, the third in our reading list, will give us all a perspective that will complement and enrich our understanding gleaned from our first two books–Waking Up White, written for white people, and How to be an Antiracist, written for us all to learn together how to remove systemic racism. This book by Coates is a “meditation on what it means to be black in America today” says the New York Times. The New Yorker calls this impassioned letter to his son, “both loving and full of a parent’s dread.”  Between the World and Me is a National Book Award Winner, one of NYT’s ten best nonfiction books of the decade, and a Pulitzer prize finalist. Toni Morrison says “This is required reading.”

We hope you will join us in reading it this summer and at our Zoom discussion on September 27th.

Joan Kimball, selenejck@gmail.com
for the Antiracism Task Force