Between the World and Me

We read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coats for bookclub.  Coats won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction last year and was listed in just about every top 10 of 2015 list that mattered.  I suppose it's a type of epistolary non-fiction, as it's written as a letter to his teenage son.  He begins by recalling how his son cried after the policeman who murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO went uncharged for any crime. "...I didn't hug you, and I didn't comfort you, because I thought it would be wrong to comfort you. I did not tell you that it would be okay, because I have never believed it would be okay. What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within that all of it."  Coats writes about his own childhood in Baltimore, and how much difficult it was for him to protect his own black body - the preoccupation he had to have every time he left the house, the knowledge of what areas were safe, how his own parents were incredibly strict with him.  "Black people love their children with a kind of obsession," he writes, "You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made."

As a white reader I really appreciate the perspective Coats brings to this topic - reading his first-hand account made the reality of so many people's lives more vivid for me. As a white reader, it would be all too easy to argue against what Coats is saying - for example, he talks about living in NY in the early 2000s and walking around with his baby in a stroller, and seeing white children on tricycles, "The galaxy belonged to them" he writes.  I'll admit I found myself wanting to argue, like so many white people do, *I* was never handed anything.  I *wish* I had the opportunity to ride my tricycle down a Manhattan street like I owned the place.  But, not only is that ignoring my huge privilege of growing up in a white body, it's completely missing the point of what he's saying.  So, while I'm really ashamed that I had the instinct to argue, I'll admit that I had it, because I think it's important to acknowledge just how ingrained these prejudices are.

Coats book is doesn't hold a lot of hope, but I think it's exposure will lead more people to come to a greater level of understanding.  The heartbreaking repetition of all of the deaths in the past few years - Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Eric Gardner, to name a few - that have lead to the Black Lives Matter movement give the book a sense of immediacy, although, as we all know, these needless deaths are nothing new.

May We Be Forgiven

I read A. M. Homes May We Be Forgiven at the insistence of my sister, who said it was her favorite book of last year.  It is an absolutely ca-razy book for the first 350 or so pages.  This guy Harold is having an affair with his sister-in-law.  He has a contentious relationship with his brother George, who is the head of a tv network and an asshole.  One day George comes home, finds Harold and his wife sleeping together in his bed, and picks up a lamp and slams it on her head.  George gets sent to mental institution instead of jail, being rich and white and having a team of lawyers.  Harold stays in their house, feeding the pets, and taking on increasing responsibility for George and Jane's children. 

One crazy thing after another happens, in what feels like maniacal farce.  It's quite funny, despite the violence, and occasionally tender, despite the fragile humanity of so many of the characters.  Ultimately Harold becomes not just the guardian of the children in name but in his heart and theirs.  Where they had a distant relationship with their parents, he creates a close one for all of them, until they have a very large extended family of relative strangers.  I was deeply drawn to that aspect because I firmly believe you create your own family - it takes care and investment - but I see it as an obligation to myself and my own little community to build a network of supporting and caring around us. 

Truthfully I thought the book was about 100 pages too long, although the last 100 serve as an extended opportunity to define the terms of this new family Harold is building.  It's almost too sweet an ending for what started with madcap plotting.  I was very interested in how Homes wrapped race into this story - essentially it's about a very wealthy, white, Jewish family in New York/New Jersey that are largely immune to answering for their crimes.  Harold's truly enamored with what he frequently refers to as "the other", for example, the Chinese family he has lunch with in Manhattan or... I hate to give too much away... some other characters of color in the book.  While the non-white characters at first feel like a sort of clumsy inclusion, most of them become part of Harold's created family.  "May we be forgiven" becomes an incantation for Harold, a plea for forgiveness for past wrongs, a promise to do better in the future.