The Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO
The Institute for Social Justice and Race Relations And the College of Education and Human Development Hosts
The JSU Campus Reading Community Book Discussion
“Between the World and Me
By Ta-Nehisi Coates”
The Jackson State University Campus Reading Community was launched in Fall 2010 here at Jackson State University. Its vision is to inspire reading throughout the JSU campus and the surrounding community. Having discussed books such as Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr , The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois, Lynch Street by Tim Spofford, Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr by Michael V. Williams, and James Meredith: Warrior and the America That Created Him, by Meredith Coleman McGee, this Reading Community has been a way to stimulate the intellectual discourse on the campus and surrounding communities.
Please join us Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 6:00 pm in the Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO exhibit room.
In this session of the 2015-2016 academic year, The JSU Campus Reading Community will discuss the book, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Between the World and Me is written as a letter to the author’s teenage son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being black in the United States. Coates recapitulates the American history of violence against black people and the incommensurate policing of black youth. A common theme is his fear of bodily harm. Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore. The work takes inspiration from James Baldwin’s 1963 The Fire Next Time. Like Baldwin, Coates does not share in traditional black Christian rhetoric of uplift, and more bleakly believes that no major change in racial justice is likely to come.
“This book was written as an open letter from the author to his 15 year old son in hopes that he could begin to understand race in the world as a person of color. “I tell you now that the question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life… ” boldly written with instances we can all relate to as men of color in our pursuit of the American Dream.” says Dr. Rodney Washington, Associate Professor, Elementary & Early Childhood, College of Education and Human Development, Jackson State University.
For more information or if you have any questions regarding the Series, please feel free to contact us at 601-979-1563 or 601-979-4348 or email: COFO.Center@jsums.edu
Please visit: www.jsums.edu/HamerInstitute for more details.
