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Diversity Studies 100 with Ashley Pickard: Between the World and Me

Get a copy:

Since physical libraries are closed, below are options to get the book electronically from local public libraries. If you need help with this, please message Haley and she will assist you in getting access to a public library copy.

eBooks

These eBooks can be accessed from any computer - just log in with your SID and last name. Consider taking a quote from one of these for your classmates to respond to, or use a chapter as a source in your PowerPoint Presentation.

Media

These documentaries can be great additions to your presentations. Use the Create Clip feature in Kanopy to select a short section to have your classmates watch and discuss, or add the clip to your slide.

Between the World and Me

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. 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’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Summary from Penguin Random House