Memoirs & Coffee Book Group to Discuss "Between the World and Me"

The next meeting of Bernardsville Public Library’s book discussion group, Memoirs and Coffee, will be held on Tuesday, June 28 at 10:30 am in the library’s Community Room. Manager Pat Kennedy-Grant will lead the discussion of "Between the World and Me" (2015) by Ta-Nehisi Coates. [The author will not be present.]

The book is a #1 New York Times Bestseller, a National Book Award Winner, and a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. It was also named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year in 2015 by The New York Times Book Review.

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a black father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Written as a letter to his adolescent son, "Between the World and Me" is the author's attempt to answer questions about what is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it, and how we can all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden.

Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, "Between the World and Me" clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

David Remnick of The New Yorker wrote about the book, “Extraordinary . . . [Coates] writes an impassioned letter to his teenage son—a letter both loving and full of a parent’s dread—counseling him on the history of American violence against the black body, the young African-American’s extreme vulnerability to wrongful arrest, police violence, and disproportionate incarceration.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow, Coates has received the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, and the George Polk Award for his Atlantic cover story “The Case for Reparations.” He lives in New York with his wife and son.

There is no charge and no sign-up is needed to join the discussion. Call the library at 766-0118 for more information.