Literary and Cultural References

Coates mentions many different works of literature in Between the World and Me. The title derives from the Richard Wright poem of the same name, which serves as the epigraph of the book. Coates also includes an epigraph for each of the three sections of the book: the first from Sonia Sanchez, a famous poet; the second from prominent Black poet and scholar Amiri Baraka; and the third from James Baldwin, author of Giovanni's Room. Coates mentions many other writers: Lucille Clifton, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Saul Bellow, Tolstoy, Robert Hayden, C. K. Williams, Carolyn Forché, Truman Capote, and Malcolm X, among others.

As a great music lover and longtime fan of rap and hip-hop, Coates refers to the music of Nas, Ice Cube, Otis Redding, Biggie Smalls, and the Wu-Tang Clan, among others. He sees Hayao Miyazaki's animated film Howl's Moving Castle with his son. One day, he reads of his friend Prince Jones' murder in The Washington Post. These references create a cultural lexicon that adds to the reader's understanding of Ta-Nehisi Coates as a person.

Setting

There are six primary settings in Between the World and Me: Baltimore, where Coates was raised in the 1980s; Howard University, where Coates found The Mecca; Prince George's (PG) County, the notoriously dangerous county in Maryland; Chicago, where Coates' wife is from; New York City, where Coates established himself as a writer; and France, where Coates felt the weight of history lift from him for the first time in his life.

Each setting is distinct, although PG County and Baltimore are similarly dangerous. Both are home to neighborhoods where Black men are victims of police brutality, gang violence, and drug abuse. Both see an alarming rate of murders and incarceration. Entire generations of Black men have been taken from PG County, Baltimore, and Chicago by the War on Drugs. In his youth, Coates had to learn to fake a certain "toughness" just to survive the walk to school. He wasn't an exceptionally good student, finding the formal education system too restraining, but he graduated from high school and went on to study at Howard University where his father worked as a research librarian.

At Howard—The Mecca—Coates was amazed by the student body, which represented the full breadth of the Black experience. Howard was considered The Mecca because it was the greatest historically Black institution of higher education. Many prominent writers had taught there, Toni Morrison included. Coates dropped out of college, though, and moved to New York City years later to pursue his career as a writer. He was saddened by the gentrification he saw in New York City. He never stopped feeling vulnerable as a Black man in a white man's country. Then he traveled to Paris, France, where he felt the weight of his race ease for the first time in his life. In France, Coates, at last, felt free.

Structure

Between the World and Me is written in the form of a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son. It thus falls into the category of epistolary nonfiction. The book itself is broken into three parts, and each part includes an epigraph from a prominent Black writer (Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, and James Baldwin, respectively). Parts I and II make up the majority of the book, whereas Part III takes up just seventeen pages in the first hardcover edition. Part I roughly corresponds to Coates' life prior to the birth of his son, while Part II is set after the birth of Coates' son. Part III consists primarily of an account of Coates' visit to Mable Jones, the mother of Prince Jones, whose death Coates discusses in Part II.