Book 23: Post Office by Charles Bukowski. Sorta funny. Pretty misogynist.
Book 24: When She was Bad by Patricia Pearson. Violence? By women? You better believe it.
Book 25: Home Fire by Kamala Shamsie. Many ebbs, many flows, often slow, then a burst.
Book 26: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The reality of being black in America yet again being put on display. Coates frames this as a letter to his son, much in the vein of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, and it allows a far more personal view to come forward. The restrictions of a more straightforward non-fiction account of being black in America are thrown off and the reader is forced to see, as an individual, how insidious the whole business is. A more straightforward non-fiction work would be subject to all manner of "Well, actually"s and "Not all"s and would seek to re-center attention on to those whose precious feelings are hurt by accusations. As a personal letter, the personal experience is far more difficult to de-center.
What really hits me hard in this book is they sheer physicality of Coates's experience. As if the mostly invisible but occasionally highly visible forces physically confining where black people can live isn't bad enough, Coates was threatened with actual, literal physical confinement for defending his son for simply being a child. As if the entitlement both demanded by and granted to so many others but not black people forcing black people to wind and wend their way through various societal pitfalls isn't bad enough, Coates is forced to literally wind and wend his way on a sidewalk because their children are allowed to occupy the entirety of it for play. Example after example ensues.
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