Between the World and Me

Review

Fairly short, but very stirring. An articulate, poetic writer doesn't try to convince, just convey his own perspective on being a Black American. A perspective that I will definitely fail to summarize, but I'll try anyway. Fearing violence and danger around every turn, knowing deeply you are different and treated as such, realizing these facts are deeply and historically ingrained in America. More than facts of life but feelings that can only be conveyed carefully and viscerally. This book starts almost distastefully grand and heavy, but I can't tell whether the book changed or I began to appreciate it. By the end I understood something. Now I have a faint shadow of this very different, passionate perspective, and I'm probably better for it.