Status
Available
Publication
Spiegel & Grau (2015), Edition: 1, 176 pages
Library's review
"The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy."" A Kirkus starred review, www.kirkusreviews.com
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate
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hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy."" A Kirkus starred review, www.kirkusreviews.com
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Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — Nonfiction — 2015)
Pulitzer Prize (Finalist — General Non-Fiction — 2016)
Kirkus Prize (Finalist — Nonfiction — 2015)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — 2015)
Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice Award (Nominee — 2018)
Alex Award (2016)
The Economist Best Books (2015.1)
Indies Choice Book Award (Winner — Adult Nonfiction — 2016)
Green Mountain Book Award (Nominee — 2017)
Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Shortlist — Nonfiction — 2016)
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction (Longlist — Nonfiction — 2016)
ALA Notable Book (Nonfiction — 2016)
Street Literature Book Award (Adult Non-Fiction — 2016)
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay (Finalist — 2016)
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nominee — Debut Author — 2016)
Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year (Nonfiction — 2015)
Booklist Editor's Choice: Adult Books (Social Sciences — 2015)
NPR: Books We Love (2015)
Boston Globe Best Book (Nonfiction — 2015)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Nonfiction — 2015)
The New York Times Best Books of the Year (Nonfiction — 2015)
The Observer Book of the Year (Politics — 2015)
Library Journal Top Ten Book (2015)
The A.V. Club best books (2015)
Notable Books List (Nonfiction — 2016)
Globe and Mail Top 100 Book (2015)
Los Angeles Public Library Best of the Year (Non-Fiction — 2015)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2015)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2015-07-14
ISBN
0812993543 / 9780812993547