This was a hard read. While the book was not lengthy, it took me some time to finish because I had to re-read many of the pages as I made my way through. I normally read on my commute to and from work so this took multiple sittings over several days. In hindsight I wish I had set aside an afternoon to go through this in one sitting because it was structured more like an organized stream of thought (as one would write a letter) as opposed to thematic, topical chapters. By reading pieces of it at a time, I felt like Mr Coates’ message was diluted by the breaks in between… as if he sat his son down in the morning to say the one part to him, then they part ways to go about their day, then sat down together again in the evening and Coates saying “Ok where were we? oh right…”. Nevertheless, it is a very powerful piece.
As a foreigner who has only lived in America for a few years, I don’t feel ready to make commentary on this issue beyond the menial “horrible, tragic, unfair…” etc. I don’t even consider myself to belong in either of the main groups of peoples in this book (“those born into a black body” and “those who believe themselves to be white” (Dreamers)). However, this was very eye opening for me and has compelled me to pick up more works by different authors on the subject. I deeply appreciate the personal accounts that the author had chosen to share, and he told them very well. My 5 stars reflect how he conveyed them as opposed to the stories themselves (I don’t think these can be rated). The book reads quite bleak overall, mainly because Coates doesn’t sugar coat anything and propels the reader head-first, no helmet, into the terrible reality of the issue. That being said, I think it’s a mistake for readers to finish the book and say “now I know what it feels like” because accepting that this is a real, fundamental problem in the world is different than adopting someone’s experiences as your own just from being told about it. I know that this book will affect the way I feel the next time I see a headline about yet another incident of police brutality. It will influence the way I feel the next time I’m stuck in traffic because of a BLM protest. I have friends and family members back home who have biased or misguided views about this matter. I hope to become more informed on the subject and dispel some of the misconceptions should the argument come up.
I highly recommend the book. I also suggest that it be read in as few sittings as possible.
Some of my favourite passages:
Somewhere out there beyond the firmament, past the asteroid belt, there were other worlds where children did not regularly fear for their bodies.
If the streets shackled my right leg, the schools shackled my left. Fail to comprehend the streets and you gave up your body now. But fail to comprehend the schools and you gave up your body later.
[My parents] were rebelling against the history books that spoke of black people only as sentimental “firsts”-first black five-star general, first black congressman, first black mayor- always presented in the bemused manner of a category of Trivial Pursuit. Serious history was the West, and the West was white.
I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.
Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.