I’m currently reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. I was looking for a short but deep read after recently finishing Transcription. I wanted a book I could finish in a few days, before I leave for a long trip to London.
I’ve had the book on Kindle for a while but recently spotted the paperback in a local bookstore. I’m glad I picked it up. I no longer like using a Kindle—I’m trying to focus more when I read, one book at a time—and also, it’s such a beautiful paperback to hold in hand.
I’m about halfway into the book now. I knew enough about Coates's work and this book to know what to expect in terms of its examination of American history and what it’s like, as the jacket blurb phrases it, “to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it.” I didn’t, however, expect the book to also be the story of a man becoming a writer.
The writer, and that was what I was becoming, must be wary of every Dream and every nation, even his own nation. Perhaps his own nation more than any other, precisely because it was his own.
This passage snuck up on me. I’ve stalled out here, savoring these words and thinking through their implications. I hope I finish the book now before I leave tomorrow.