However every news article, every interview, every conversation surrounding this work of art focused solely on the fact that it’s an important piece for white people to read. His book was a deeply personal letter to his son about the hurts he has suffered as a black man in a country that is supposedly founded on the idea of equal rights.
He argues, rightfully so, that it’s painful when you put so much of yourself out there for public consumption and then are unable to control that piece of your heart once it’s been removed from your chest and handed to the world.
And people who think that was ever in question, quite simply, weren’t listening. In subsequent Twitter conversations, Coates points out that he has absolutely no problem with white people reading his book. How will this work impact white people? What might they gain from it? Will it speak to them? In 2016, people of color are still being asked to create with only white people in mind. I’m not sure how to make sense out of that.Īnd a good portion of the “woke” white world lost it’s ever-lovin’ mind. They have no meaning for the interpretation of the book and what matters is white people reading the book. The black people in Harlem, in West Baltimore, in the south-side of Chicago, and in Washington, DC, who inspired that book, who empowered that book- they’re erased. And that’s what it means to be in the bubble. And a signature of the bubble was a young white woman reading Between the World and Me. I saw this SNL skit a couple weeks back called “The Bubble”, where you could retreat from Trump. It’s not that you don’t want other people to read it, but then the entire book becomes like that, about what white people think about it. The book is for them, in that sense, it’s for that feeling. You feel yourself trying to write from an African-American perspective that is not fully represented, and in your mind, to the extend there is any audience, you see yourself as writing for African Americans who are like you, who are somewhat frustrated about things. I had no defenses for the idea that the biggest question about The World and Me would not be about my friend Prince Jones, who got killed not about the communication between myself and my son not about growing up in West Baltimore but, why are so many white people reading this book? Literally whole articles written about what is going on here.
Writers have to prepare themselves to not be read by a bunch of people. First of all, I didn’t expect the book to be so successful. Klein brings up the success of Between the World and Me and Coates expresses the following:
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