Ta-Nehisi Coates on Race, Hip-Hop and Being Praised by Toni Morrison
About three weeks ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates got a phone call from Chris Jackson, his editor at Random House’s Spiegel & Grau imprint. Jackson was calling to propose moving up the publication of Coates’ new book, Between the World and Me, from its planned release this fall to mid-July. “I thought it was crazy,” says Coates, 39. “I was basically opposed to it. Then we had coffee, and he made the case. And it turns out they were right.”
Between the World and Me, which arrived in stores this week, is an extraordinary piece of writing: a lyrical blend of history and memoir, framed as a letter to the author’s 14-year-old son. It is also very timely. Over 152 riveting pages, Coates wrestles with the racist violence at America’s core in unflinchingly honest terms – casting aside easy abstractions to lay bare the physical danger and fear that come with living in a black body. It’s a deeply personal story with profound implications for everyone living in this country, and one that feels downright necessary this summer.
Coates meets me at his publisher’s Manhattan office in the middle of a busy day of promotion for the book – after we talk, he’s due to make appearances on Canadian radio and All In With Chris Hayes. “It’s been pretty insane,” he says. He’s wearing a flat cap and a bilingual t-shirt (“Ce moment when you start penser en deux langues at the same temps“), with the laptop he used to write most of the book open on the table next to him. When a Random House employee brings him a cup of takeout coffee, he accepts it with relief.
The book’s origins, Coates explains, date back to a 2011 contract that he inked to write a volume of essays about the Civil War. The project’s focus shifted as he worked separately on “The Case for Reparations,” a painstakingly researched cover story published last spring in The Atlantic, where he is a national correspondent. “That was a really empirical case,” Coates says. “I wanted to think about the problem I was dealing with for reparations – this grand theft, this idea of plunder – from a more literary perspective, and I didn’t know what that looked like.” The crucial next step came when he reread James Baldwin’s classic 1963 work The Fire Next Time. “I was so moved by the way he approached the problem,” he says. “Baldwin was a writer, first and foremost. The Fire Next Time is a beautiful work of art. And I really wanted to make something beautiful.”
We spoke for 45 minutes about literature, hip-hop, the meaning of hope and more.
How old were you when you first encountered James Baldwin’s work?
I was about 13 or 14 when I heard Malcolm X’s speech “Message to the Grass Roots.” He’s criticizing the March on Washington, and he says they wouldn’t even let Baldwin get up and talk, because Baldwin’s liable to say anything. I thought, “Who is this dude?” My exposure to him was as somebody who was slightly crazy, a guy who lobbed firebombs. Then I got to college and read The Fire Next Time and Going to Meet the Man, a short story collection. I have this fond memory of my time in college – I wasn’t a great student, but my time was open and unrestricted. I remember sitting in this library at Howard University and reading The Fire Next Time in one session. It was such a pleasurable experience, to be lost in a work of art. I didn’t really grasp the political points. Did I understand what Baldwin was saying about religion? No, not really. But I knew that it had been said really beautifully. I had that. When I went back to read The Fire Next Time, I remembered me as a 19-year-old kid, sitting in that library, lost. And I thought about how in this age, where the Internet is ubiquitous, it’s very hard to have that experience. I had this vision of some 19-year-old kid sitting in a library somewhere, picking this book up, and just disappearing for a while. That was all I wanted.