BTWAM Discussion Questions
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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates:
PART A: Coates modeled the book’s epistolary structure on James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, which is also written as a series of letters. Why do you think Coates chose the epistolary form, rather than that of the traditional essay? Why do you think Coates wrote this book in the form of a letter to his son, specifically? How does the format affect your relationship to the text? Do you think this format might make some readers uncomfortable? How might black readers have a different experience reading this text than white readers?
PART B: Close Reading/Personal Interaction Questions (to pg. 71)
1. Why were Coates and so many other young black people drawn to Malcolm X 25 years after his death in the 1990’s?
2. What lessons did Coates learn at Howard University? Out on “the Yard”? At the Moorland- Spingarn Research Center? From his history professor Linda Heywood? 3. Who is Queen Nzinga? How is she first one of Coates’ trophies and later the source of one of his heaviest realizations?
4. Who said, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” How does this statement send Coates off on a journey that results in “intellectual vertigo”? What does he come to realize is the problem? Who then, is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?
5. Who is the girl “with the long dreads” who lived in a house . . . What does he learn from her and those who live in that house? Who does she introduce Coates to that he will never forget? 6. What two things change Coates’ life that he is “free” from the past, the schools, the streets, and trophies?
PART C: WORDS AND ALLUSIONS TO LOOK UP: diaspora, Mecca, the Middle Passage, simian, presumptions, Saul Bellow, Tolstoy, Samori Toure, struggle, slavery
After looking up the words, explain the significance of the words to the letter Coates in writing to his son.
BTWAM and the “Dream”
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Coates describes what he calls “the Dream” on 116: “to grow rich and live in one of those disconnected houses out in the country, in one of those small communities, one of those cul-de-sacs with its gently curving ways, where they staged teen movies and children built treehouses, and that last lost year before college, teenagers made love in cars parked at the lake. The Dream seemed to be the end of the world for me, the height of American ambition. What more could possibly exist beyond the dispatches, beyond the suburbs?” List the pros and cons of the Dream. As an adult writer, Coates clearly no longer believes in this dream. Why?
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