- Read Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me”
- Option 1: Consider why Coates took the title for his book. How does the poem influence/alter/ clarify your understanding of Coates’s project?
I think that Coates may have taken this title for his book because they have a similar tone and topic. Richard Wright was a black man walking through the woods who witnessed a lynching and that was the basis of his poem. Coates was a black man expiring many different types of racism towards him and the people around him and I’m sure reading this poem stood out to him. This poem influences my understanding of Coates because I feel like these are the instances Coates talks about but Wright does it in more disturbing detail than what is in Coates writing.
