Being born black in the United States today, Coates adds, ‘you have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels’ (107).Ĭoates provokes many theological thoughts, questions, and conversations. Coates returns to this issue at every possible turn in the book, exploring probable reasons behind the failure of education and justice systems and the inevitable peril of young black people in America. This racism has shaped the US since its inception. For him, those Americans who believe they are white also believe they are superior to others - that they are the people, the owners of the Dream, and consequently oppress those who are not white. He later warns, ‘In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body- it is heritage’ (103). Coates’ book is an extended talk from father to son, exploring many struggles that young black boys negotiate as they grow up in a country where, as one African American leader put it, ‘it is always hunting season for black people, especially young black males.’ Coates is convinced that the black body is always in danger the police who are oath-bound to protect his son are also endowed with the authority to destroy his body - with impunity (9).

This conversation - often referred to as ‘The Talk’ - has become a normal part of life in African American families when young males are told how to behave when confronted by the police and how to engage with a world that will treat them differently because of their black bodies. As a fifteen-year old black boy in America, Samori was affected by these tragic stories, and Coates found it necessary to talk to him about the dangers of living in a black body in the US.

Within the space of one year, when Samori was fifteen, he saw the deaths of several African Americans at the hands of the police and the acquittal of another young African American’s killer. The book is written in the form of a letter from Coates to his adolescent son, Samori, to help him understand the complexities of growing up black in the US. This book is a critical social commentary on life in the United States that should inform every conversation concerned with mission in places that live with racial and economic oppression. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a self-proclaimed atheist who rejects the Christian God, and yet his book, Between the World and Me, is what happens when God draws the curtains to unveil the evil of racism that prevails across the world. Review of Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisis Coates, (Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 2015).

In between the world and me