While he was a student at Howard, he heard of the death of one of his classmates, Prince Jones. He began to write and eventually became a journalist. There he met his future wife and many lifelong friends. He learned about his own people and confronted his imperfect understanding of this history. There he underwent an intellectual awakening, marveling at the diversity of black people at Howard and undertaking studies of black writers and black history. The swagger and loudness of the men on the corners was their way to protect themselves and to announce their presence as human beings.Īs a young man school (and religion) seemed useless to Coates, but he pursued his studies in order to attend Howard University. To grow up black in Baltimore was usually to grow up poor, marginalized, and desperate to assert one’s humanity. His father was hard on him, but Coates now sees that black parents often are so they do not lose their children. He weaves his personal, historical, and intellectual development into his ruminations on how to live in a black body in America.Ĭoates writes of his upbringing in the ghettos of Baltimore in which he learned the codes of the street in order to survive but never fully embraced them. Between the World and Meis a letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s fifteen-year-old son, Samori.
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