Ta-Nehisi Coates
1 book analyzed
Biography
Ta-Nehisi Coates was born in 1975 in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Paul Coates — a Vietnam veteran, Black Panther, and founder of Black Classic Press. He grew up in West Baltimore, attended Howard University without graduating, and worked for years as a freelance journalist before a fellowship at the Atlantic gave him the platform that would lead to Between the World and Me. The book was written in the wake of the Ferguson uprising (2014) and the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, and draws on the murder of his Howard friend Prince Jones by a Prince George's County police officer — a killing that became central to his moral and political formation. He had been working on the ideas in this book for years; the specific letter to his son was the form that gave the ideas their shape.