Here is the question you'll write about in class. Feel free to respond to it at home, but you will have time to write it in class. If you do this at home, you shouldn't spend more than twenty minutes working on it:
In several respects, Between the World and Me charts Coates individual development in relation to the ways race (or "racecraft") works in the United States. How does Coates's perspective change over the course of the book? What remains the same? What does he most want his son (or the reader) to take away from his reflections on race? (Keep in mind, given the length of the response and the time limits imposed on it, you should only devote a few sentences--including quotes--to each question.)
For Friday (Day 1) and Monday (Day 2), read the essays by W. E. B. Du Bois and James Baldwin posted below. As you read them, consider how their ideas and rhetorical strategies might have influenced Coates's writing of Between the World and Me.
Du Bois, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" (1903)
Baldwin, "Letter to My Nephew" (1962; sometimes published as "My Dungeon Shook")
