Coates on Writing and Education

Okay, okay.  I realize that Te-Nehisi Coates's book, Between the World and Me, has been the focus of  conversations for months now.  He won the National Book Award for this text and has received high praise for his writing.  But there are various points in the text, written as a missive to his son, that are particularly useful to me as a professor and scholar.  I hope to work through some of those ideas in future entries, but the topics of writing and education seem a relevant place to start.

Coates notes that his mother made him write about issues at school and how these were important moments in his life because “these were the earliest acts of interrogation, of drawing myself into consciousness” (29).  I’m especially interested in what he is developing here because in teaching composition, it’s important for students to find meaning and importance in their own work, and Coates is talking about writing as both a useful, everyday activity, but also a revolutionary one.

His early experiences about writing become a transition into describing his father, and his father’s dedication to reading and keeping texts written by, about, and for Black people.  As a leader in Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, his father raised awareness not only through his work in the Party, but also as a librarian and archivist for those varied publications.  Earlier, Coates offers a scathing indictment of schools and the educational system for its inability to address the difficulties experienced by the Black students in Baltimore when he grew up.  He turns the indictment of institutional education into a discussion about the necessity of community education and knowledge, with his father as a key educator.

Coates addresses myriad important topics and issues within his book, and I look forward to continuing my own "acts of interrogation" as I read.