In WP3 I was able to analyze the book Between the World and Me and figure out some important key themes that were talked about throughout the entirety of the book. As I had some trouble finding answers within the book at first, answering the questions provided helped to bring the book into perspective. This is probably one of the first times that I was analyzing a book this complex, that does not provide explicit answers and call-to-action. One of the questions that I remember having some struggle with was the fourth one. Though I tried answering as best I can, I did find some more clarity in class when we were speaking about that specific question. Bringing some much needed clarity for myself I was able to fully understand what the question was asking when it was said that Samori would not have to be the one to learn to accept others, but for others to accept him.

Source - Writing Practice #3 (WP3): "Between the World and Me"

1. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a journalist, but also an author of books and graphic novels. Having read this far into "Between the World and Me" one way I would characterize Coates representation of himself in the book is as a father figure as he opens it with "Son" and writes to us in our "fifteenth year.

2. In challenging the view that history has been a story of progress, Coates uses several real world examples to support his claim with "Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes" as well as having seen "men in uniform drive by and murder Tamir Rice, a twelve year old child." These events challenge the story of progress throughout history because they show how racial conflict is still alive in the United States, though it may have been declared dead or been less severe than in previous points in history. There is still law enforcement wielding power above its citizens who they are meant to protect and history can not be a story of progress if there is still violence without justice that is happening within the United States.

3. Telling Samori that he must be responsible for his own body, this responsibility that Coates is referring to is the responsibility of owning his body and being held accountable for the "worst actions of other black bodies" that "will always be assigned" to Samori. He will have to be responsible for being born the way that he was born and Coates also tells Samori that he will have to be responsible for the lives of powerful people "the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick." Either way Samori is going to have this type of ownership over his body where he is going to be the one responsible for actions of others and learn how to deal with this unfairness on his own.

4. Samori is told that the birth of a better world is not "up to" him because he is going to have to worry about other things like the fact that there still is officers using excessive force and killing blacks or that there is others who will discriminate against him for actions of others, as well as the ones who are blinded and chase the "Dream." He "must struggle to truly remember this past in all its nuance, error, and humanity" and "resist the common urge...toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice," rather than birthing a better world.

5. Coates' purpose for writing this book, is to display how he grew up and having to learn "that there was another way beyond the schools and the streets," making it personal, and explaining how his son is growing up in a society where the enslaved were "people turned to fuel for the American machine" also making his text political. 

Work cited

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the world and me. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Print.