Between the World and Me

One of the most appealing things about Ta-Nehisi Coates as a writer is his humility: his openness to change, to self-education, to acknowledgment of his constantly reforming knuckleheadedness. But as any readers of his blog or his powerful Atlantic article, "The Case for Reparations," will know, that humility nevertheless often leads him to bold conclusions, in this case a searing and beautiful inquiry into the black body as the site of national plunder, framed as a letter to his teenage son written with the fear and pride that African American parents have shared for generations. A lot of weight is being put on this little book (on its cover Toni Morrison calls Coates the heir to James Baldwin), but it can bear it, at least that portion that Coates doesn't put back on the reader to carry for him- or herself.