Between the World and Me

Reception

After reading Between the World and Me, novelist Toni Morrison wrote that Coates fills "the intellectual void" left by James Baldwin's death 28 years prior.[2] A. O. Scott of The New York Times said the book is "essential, like water or air."[2] David Remnick of The New Yorker described it as "extraordinary."[2][16]

In Politico, Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, cited Coates' "monstrous" passage about Black people who died in 9/11. Most people, wrote Lowrey, would not think, as Coates did, "They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body."[19]

Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times wrote that the phrasing of his comments on 9/11 could be easily misread. Between the World and Me functioned as a sequel to Coates's 2008 memoir, which displayed Coates's talents as an emotional and lyrical writer.[4] Coates's use of "the Dream" (in reference to paradisal suburban life) confused her, and she thought Coates stretched beyond what is safely generalizable. Kakutani thought that Coates did not consistently acknowledge racial progress achieved over the course of centuries and that some parts read like the author's internal debate.[10] Benjamin Wallace-Wells of New York magazine said that a sense of fear for one's children propels the book, and Coates's atheism gives the book a sense of urgency.[2]

On November 18, 2015, it was announced that Coates had won the National Book Award for Between the World and Me.[20] NPR's Colin Dwyer had considered it the favorite to win the prize, given the book's reception.[6] It also won the 2015 Kirkus Prize for nonfiction.[21]

The book topped The New York Times Best Seller list for nonfiction on August 2, 2015, and remained number 1 for three weeks. It topped the same list again during the week of January 24, 2016.[22]

The book was selected by Washington University in St. Louis and Augustana College[23] in 2016, as the book for all first-year students to read and discuss in the fall 2016 semester.[24] In the same year, the book was ranked 7th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.[25]

In February 2023, an AP English teacher in South Carolina's Lexington & Richland County School District Five was forced to halt a lesson on the book by school administrators, who claimed that the lesson violated state budget provisions. South Carolina law prohibits the use of state funds for lessons that teach that "an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his race or sex" or "an individual, by virtue of his race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously."[26]


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