Marsha L

In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.

It was Devin Galaudet’s job to take the ashes and pour them into the waters of Cadiz, Spain, after his father’s death. Carrying them across Spain by car, train, and backpack, this was their swan song, their “buddy picture” come to life. Half a mile from the Mediterranean, though, Devin lost his father’s ashes. Standing in the middle of a windy cobblestone street in Old Town Cadiz, he wondered what the hell just happened - not just in that moment, but the 40 years prior.

Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race”, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of Black women and men - bodies exploited through slavery and segregation and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.