Between the World and Me (Coates) - church book club
As part of our effort to continue to center BIPOC voices in our programming, small groups, and theological reflection at church, we offered a book club style study on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2015 memoir Between the World and Me. We asked people to sign up and then I divided them up into groups of 5-6, provided them with discussion starters to structure their reflections, and asked them to find a time to meet “sometime around the end of August.” This is the first time we’ve done something like this - we sometimes do all-church studies that are usually multi-week and involve structured lesson plans, so I didn’t know what to expect, but we had great participation. It was a great mix of folks revisiting the book for a second time and lots of people who just needed a push to read it as it had been on their list for a while. It is astonishingly powerful and the writing is beautifully precise while describing experiences and relaying truths that I wish did not exist. Coates reads the audio book, which many participants found deeply meaningful. It’s technically a quick read, but it’s worth every extra minute you spend with it.
Coates is an atheist, so some of my discussion starters are designed to help folks make connections back to scripture. I don’t think it is important as a way to validate Coates, but more so as a way to give participants a way to orient what Coates is doing in the symbolic world and stories that they (we) use to make meaning out of their lives. My questions also come out of my position as a white person though were intended to be open-ended and useful for all group members.
You could talk about this book for hours and hours - and you probably will, one way or another, if you read it - but one of the reasons I think we had good success in participation was because it was a one-session commitment. People have been recommending the book for 5 years (it won the National Book Award and Toni Morrison called it “required reading”…my recommendation means nothing in comparison), but I can officially add that it can work really well as a way for Christians to reflect on the power of Coates’ words and experiences, and as mirror for readers’ own ideas about race, and also as a window into some deeply challenging and productive interpretations of themes in scripture as well.
Feel free to use my questions as possible starting points for your own groups or reflection.
