Between the World and Me

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

During the spring of 2018, student members of the Common Reading Experience Committee reviewed 25 books recommended by faculty and staff. After assessing each book’s relevancy to current issues, readability for first-year students, and interdisciplinary themes and classroom applications, the students recommended Ta-Nehisi Coates’ National Book Award Winner Between the World and Me, a letter to his 15-year-old son about growing up black in Baltimore. However, beyond the epistle to his son, Coates describes a childhood and young adulthood riddled with fear of being beat up or killed and the institutionalization of racism in America.

When endorsing this book for Fall 2018, one student said it was, “Very highly reviewed and a topic that I feel is beneficial for all to understand.”

Another added, “The text is descriptive and visceral in the most positive of ways to really drive home the importance of the issues at hand.”

Themes of Between the World and Me include the body, incarceration rates of people of color, economics, real estate, trauma, music, education, institutional racism, as well as family and parenting.

While Coates is most well-known as a journalist for The Atlantic, the Village Voice and Time, he has most recently added the Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, a graphic novel which was nominated for a Hugo Award for best graphic story, to his list of writing accomplishments and is in the process of writing a Captain America graphic novel as well. His other books are The Beautiful Struggle and We Were Eight Years in Power.

Events

The Common Reading Experience Committee has organized the following events for students, faculty, staff, and community:

7 p.m., Tuesday, October 9th – MCD 101

  • “Whose Bodies Count: Identity and Ethnicity in United States” by Jess R. Gagliardi and Edward R. Crowther. In his epistolary memoir Between the World and Me,Ta-Nehisi Coates exposes white supremacy, the core singular value in the United States, and its destructive and ultimately deadly effects on black bodies. By focusing on the special white exploitation of black bodies, Crowther and Gagliardi offer this discussion on highlights of the on-going attempts to block efforts to celebrate diversity and achieve social justice.

7 p.m., Wednesday, November 14th – MCD 101

  • “From Baldwin to Biggie: An Anthropological Look at Cultural Heroes and Prophetic Voices in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me.” In his exposition and excavation of African diaspora through his own, and shared and common lived experiences, Coates’ locates cultural models in the likely areas of music and literature, genres with significant oral traditions themselves linked to cultural curation and preservation. This short ethnographic study of his memoir, ethnomusicological, literary, legal, and other anthropological lenses will focus Coates’ narrative into a musical playlist and a reading list that, like Coates, acknowledges histories in order to reimagine, or remix, futures. Maria McMath is a cultural anthropologist, educator, and research design professional who currently acts as coordinator of a National Science Foundation grant that seeks to retain women/of color in STEM/SBS fields at Adams State University.

TBA – Students Respond to Between the World and Me

  • If interested in participating, please contact CRE Chair.

CRE Committee

  • Michelle Le Blanc, Chair, English Instructor, Writing Studio Director – mleblanc@adams.edu, 587-7863
  • Jess Gagliardi, Instructor of Developmental Education
  • Nick Saenz, Professor of History
  • Erik Hildebrandt, student, Communications major
  • Adeline Sabido, student, Nursing major
  • Connor Flynn, student, unknown major
  • Brianna Gonzales, student, Psychology major

Classroom Opportunities

Between the World and Me

  • Link to the Teacher’s Guide for Between the World and Me
  • Explore the meaning and practice civil discourse
  • Nurture community intra-dependence in the classroom
  • Math and statistics: Examine the statistics behind the proportion of those profiled, incarcerated, or killed (Coates 132).
  • Reading and Writing: Read, analyze, research, and reflect upon Coates’ assertions, write summaries and analysis.
  • Sociology: examine constructs of race, whiteness, and other. “…And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white” (Baldwin 133).
  • PoliSci: examine daily headlines and social media feeds for political messages and implications.
  • History: “You cannot forget how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold” (Coates 71).
  • Economics: “… The men who engineered the covenants, who fixed the loans, who planned the projects, who built the streets and sold red ink by the barrel … (111).
  • Criminology: “To yell ‘black-on-black crime’ is to shoot a man then shame him for bleeding. And the premise that allowed for these killing fields – the reduction of the black body – is no different than the premise that allowed for the murder of Prince Jones” (Coates 111).
  • Communication: Writing as activism
  • Psychology: “ … and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable” (Coates 108).
  • Media and Social Media: “That year I felt myself to be drowning in the news reports of murder. I was aware that these murders very often did not land upon the intended targets but fell upon great-aunts, PTA mothers, overtime uncles, and joyful children – fell upon them random and relentless, like great sheets of rain” (Coates 19).
  • Poetry & Writing: Coates writes, “Poetry aims for an economy of truth – loose and useless words must be discarded, and I found that these loose and useless words were not separate from loose and useless thought. Poetry was not simply the transcription of notions – beautiful writing rarely is. I wanted learn to write, which was ultimately still, as my mother had taught me, a confrontation with my own innocence, my own rationalizations. Poetry was the processing of my thought until the slag of justification fell away and I was left with the cold steel truths of life” (Coates 51-52).

Other Resources 

Selection Criteria

The Committee selects the common read book based on the following:

  • Will students find the book engaging?
  • Does the book reflect cultural and social diversity?
  • Does the book encourage intelligent discussion?
  • Does the book reflect multiple disciplines?

Help us build a great Common Reading Program

A successful Common Reading program requires broad participation across campus. Here’s how you can contribute:

Suggest a Book

Have a great idea for the next common read book? Let us know! Your suggestions form the list from which the CRE Committee selects the next book.

Help Us Build a Common Reader

The CRE Committee would like to create a Common Reader to accompany the book, and requests your suggestions for related reading selections that will enhance student consideration of the subject matter from a broad variety of positions, perspectives, and disciplines. Selections can include poetry, book chapters, articles, and short stories across multiple disciplines. These reading selections can be used inside and outside the classroom to enhance discussion of the book.

Event Proposals

In the past, faculty and staff at Adams State have successfully hosted many Common Reading Experience events, including book discussions, lectures, field trips, special topics courses, art projects, and service learning initiatives. The committee welcomes all proposals for events and activities related to the selected common reading experience book. Proposals should include elements that reflect the themes and issues of the book. Events can be scheduled for either Fall or Spring.

Proposals should ideally be received by May 1 to be considered for the Fall semester, and by October 31 for the Spring semester. Please send them to the Committee Chair.

Past Common Reading Selections

  • 2017: Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (2015) by Jon Krakauer
    Shortlisted:So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Nickel and Dimed, One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military During World War II
  • 2016: Waiting for the Barbarians (1999) by J. M. Coetzee
  • 2015: Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future (2011) by Robert B. Reich.
  • 2014: The Other Wes Moore (2010) by Wes Moore
  • 2013: Leaving Mother Lake (2004) by Yang Erche Namu and Christine Mathieu
  • 2012: Enrique’s Journey (2005) by Sonia Nazario
  • 2011: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Ellen Forney
  • 2010: Sky Bridge (2007) by Laura Pritchett
  • 2009: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007) by Ishmael Beah
  • 2008: Three Cups of Tea (2006) by Greg Mortenson