Written as a letter to his fifteen-year-old son Samori, Coates's book takes its structure from James Baldwin's letter to his nephew in The Fire Next Time and its title from a Richard Wright poem. Moving from his Baltimore childhood to Howard University — his "Mecca" — to fatherhood and a visit with the mother of a slain friend, Coates argues that American racism is not an aberration but a system built on violence against Black bodies, and that the consoling national story he calls "the Dream" is itself part of the machinery. The book won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates · Original publisher: Spiegel & Grau (New York), 2015
