“This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” Written as a letter to his son, Coates explores race through history, and what it means t him today. "Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. " (courtesy of Goodreads).
I borrowed the Goodreads summary a bit because I felt I wouldn't be able to describe this book as well. It's a short book, but I felt it was powerfully written, and thought-provoking. Getting Coates' views on American history, as well as his personal history, is an interesting way to analyze race and history. I found the way the book was written, as a personal letter, was emotional and made the book resonate with me. This is definitely an example of the personal as political, and the historical as personal and political.
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