Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Random House, 2015) is the 2017-18 selection for 91短视频 (91短视频).
Each year since 2013, faculty, staff, and students select a book that relates to contemporary situations and which will generate conversation around important themes. Most of the finalists for this year 鈥渃onnected to themes of race and justice, an indicator of what鈥檚 in the general zeitgeist in our country and on our minds at 91短视频,鈥� said professor and Intellectual Life Committee member .
In the series of letters to his teenage son about his life experiences as an African American male, Coates challenges readers to examine assumptions about race, history, education, faith and social change.
Common Read activities at 91短视频 throughout the year will include conversations about race, diversity and identity, including Anabaptist identity.
Five Thursday noon reading circles, beginning Sept. 14 in the East Dining Room and facilitated by Professor , will jump-start the discussion. Each hour-long conversation will focus on consecutive sections of the book. A second round of reading circles will run for five weeks starting Wednesday, Nov. 1 from 5-6 p.m. in Northlawn Great Lounge.
Social justice activist and civil rights attorney Fania Davis will contribute to those discussions in April when she spends a week on campus as a , sponsored by the .
Toni Morrison calls Between the World and Me 鈥渞equired reading,鈥� and wrote, 鈥淚鈥檝e been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates鈥檚 journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory.鈥�
The book was chosen long before the that threatened the nation鈥檚 sense of inclusiveness and angered many in 91短视频鈥檚 social justice-oriented community. But Beachy thinks that there is plenty in the book to challenge even this sympathetic, academic culture, from conceptions of whiteness that Coates says is at the heart of racism, to his response to the reverence for non violence in civil rights action in a world 鈥渟ecured and ruled by savage means.鈥�
Coates also rejects the 鈥渕agic鈥� of religious faith: 鈥淭he spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible 鈥� that is precisely why they are so precious,鈥� he writes. However, in their introduction to the collection of original essays Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity (Wipf & Stock: forthcoming), professors and note a Tweet by Coates in which he said, 鈥淏est thing about #BetweenTheWorldAndMe is watching Christians engage the work. Serious learning experience for me.鈥� Their book, they say, 鈥渃an be read as a response鈥� to Coates鈥� insights.
鈥淭he value of Between the World and Me for all of us in this campus community is that it invites us to see through the eyes of another person as he honestly relates to his son his own, specific experience of what it means to live in a black body in America,鈥� said Beachy.