Ms. Hen reviews Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Spiegel and Grau

2015

Ms. Hen picked up this book at the Little Free Library a while ago, but she decided to read it simply because it was short, and she read two lengthy books recently. She didn’t really know what it was about before she started reading it, which sometimes is a nice surprise. Not always.

This book is in the form of a letter to the author’s son talking about how difficult it is to live in the black body. Coates gives examples from his youth growing up on the rough streets of Baltimore, then through high school and college, talking about the events that occurred to him that made him who he is at the time of writing the book. He writes how traveling to France made him change his perspective on how he felt about the world.

Ms. Hen was struck by the fact that the author of this memoir is the same age as her. Most of what she has read about how difficult it is to be a black person was written about life in the United States between fifty and eighty years ago. The author discusses events that Ms. Hen remembers, which occurred when she was approximately the same age as the author. He talks about the turning points with a different view than Ms. Hen, such as 9/11, which he views as racist, since the country idolized the police officers and firefighters who Coates knew were truly racist and didn’t deserve to be so revered.

One of the aspects of this book that Ms. Hen does not agree with is the author's lack of faith. He is an atheist, and Ms. Hen does not agree with that position. Ms. Hen thinks that faith is something that can help us through difficult times. Everyone has a painful life, and nobody’s life is perfect. Ms. Hen sometimes wonders if God exists, but she believes in the power of the Universe, and an underlying force beneath everything. She believes that people without faith have no hope for happiness. Life can be terrible, but faith makes us stronger.

Ms. Hen does not believe in the Christian God, which is what the author was exposed to when he was young. It appears that the only option he had for faith was Christianity, which is not satisfactory to everyone. There is an entire world of options for faith, one can believe in the Eastern view, or one can be spiritual, or find any faith that is appealing. Ms. Hen understands that people can suffer in their lives, but her faith has pulled her through.

Ms. Hen understands why people like this book, but she does not connect to it. She does not enjoy informative nonfiction as much as she loves fiction, because with fiction she can get inside the characters and live in their heads and their bodies and become them for a short time. In this book, she did not become the book, which is sad, because she knows it’s important. Everyone has different tastes, and though this book is an award winner, and is highly respected, it is not to Ms. Hen’s taste.