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Aug 22, 2017KMJ_ rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
I knew this book was being compared to the works of James Baldwin when I started reading it, and for me it didn’t come anywhere close. I’ve liked what I’ve read by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, but I didn’t feel the same about this book. The book is addressed to Coates’s son, Samori. It’s supposed to be reminiscent of James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew, but that brief letter feels like it was truly written for Baldwin’s nephew. In Between the World and Me the book never feels like it really is for Samori. It is aimed at us, the readers. There is no sense at all of who his son is as a person or their family. There is no intersectionality in the book, with Samori’s mother almost being a passing character.