Between the World and Me

Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.

Chapter 1, Pages 1-25

Reading Check

1. Who is Coates writing this book for?

2. What event inspired Coates to write this book?

3. What emotion characterizes the Black people Coates knew growing up?

Multiple Choice

1. When talking to the news host, what does Coates cite as the reason he fears losing his body?

A) White people have recently started taking matters into their own hands.

B) He is more concerned because of his father’s recent death.

C) American politics and media have become more polarized.

D) America has a long history of destroying the bodies of Black people.

2. What does Coates say about police who kill Black men?

A) They are reprehensible outliers.

B) They demonstrate that the system doesn’t work.

C) They correctly interpret their role in American society.

D) They believe their actions are justified, which is pitiable.

3. Why doesn’t Coates comfort his son after Michael Brown’s killer is exonerated?

A) He wants his son to be a strong man.

B) Comforting him would indicate that things would be okay.

C) He does not want to embarrass him.

D) He doesn’t know how to present the truth to such a young man.

4. What is the Dream that Coates frequently refers to?

A) Martin Luther King Jr.’s belief in equality

B) a fiction of equality maintained by racial injustice

C) the possibility to move beyond the social construct of race

D) his hope for his son

5. What does Coates learn from the boy who pulls a gun on him when he is in sixth grade?

A) how easily his body can be taken from him

B) the value of aggression in a dangerous neighborhood

C) that Black people are encouraged to do violence to each other

D) how to navigate a world of violence

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Coates say is the reason that his parents used corporal punishment?

2. How does Coates characterize the fashion that young men on the streets of Baltimore wear?

3. For Coates, where did the violence, drugs, and other societal ills he faced growing up in Baltimore originate?

4. How is Samori’s world different than the one Coates lived in while growing up?

Chapter 1, Pages 26-50

Reading Check

1. Why does Coates think what he learns in public school is irrelevant?

2. What Civil Rights era figure does Coates most identify with?

3. Where does Coates go to college?

Multiple Choice

1. What is the primary thing public schools in Black or urban areas are concerned with, according to Coates?

A) survival

B) curiosity

C) compliance

D) identity

2. What is the point of the writing assignments Coates gives his son?

A) to teach him to investigate his own behavior

B) to teach him the value of discipline

C) to teach him to advocate for himself

D) to connect with him as a fellow thinker

3. Why does Coates take issue with the idea of nonviolence for Black people?

A) it is hypocritical to expect it

B) it is not a pathway to equality

C) it hasn’t worked

D) it requires too much of the individual

4. What is implied by Saul Bellow’s quote, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus” (Page 43)?

A) The Zulus have a great trove of undiscovered novelists.

B) Tolstoy is universally accepted as valuable literature, but the Zulus must have their own version that is set apart.

C) Most Black culture is beneath the best of white culture.

D) Zulus have not had the chance to rise to greatness.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Coates think of the public school system he grew up in?

2. What does Coates think of the myth of personal responsibility? Is it a way for white people to exonerate themselves from systemic injustice?

3. Why is Coates’ university “the Mecca”?

4. What does Coates learn that he didn’t expect when he begins digging into Black literature and philosophy?

Chapter 1, Pages 51-73

Reading Check

1. How many relationships does Coates describe in this section?

2. Who does Coates identify with in the story of Queen Nzinga?

3. What does Coates say serves as the ring between himself and his partner?

4. Why must Samori be responsible for his body in a way that other boys are not?

Multiple Choice

1. What does Coates learn about that helps him dispel his romantic ideas of Africa?

A) some African societies’ complicity in the slave trade

B) the current state of African economies

C) exploitation of Africans by their governments

D) critical theory about power structures

2. Why does Coates argue that the Dream is the enemy of art?

A) It keeps people from succeeding financially.

B) It thrives on generalization.

C) It excludes all nonwhite voices.

D) It only lifts up popular voices.

3. What does Coates think of the State Street Corridor in Chicago?

A) It is a testament to Black resilience.

B) It would encourage people to act if they knew about its state.

C) It is a moral disaster that people willingly ignore.

D) It reflects a problem unique to Chicago.

4. What does Coates urge his son to hold on to as he is educated?

A) his own independence of thought

B) the legacy of slavery

C) his passion for learning

D) his mission to heal the world

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Coates have to confront when he spends time with the bisexual woman?

2. Why does Coates find value in journalism as a profession?

3. What motivates Coates to protect his own body?

4. Why does Coates name his son Samori?

Chapter 2, Pages 74-97

Reading Check

1. What is Prince George’s County police most known for?

2. What happened to Prince Jones?

3. What leads to the confrontation with a white woman that Coates describes?

Multiple Choice

1. According to Coates, why do Black parents love their children “with a kind of obsession” (82)?

A) They have been taught to value family over society or nation.

B) They see their children as constantly under threat.

C) They have access to few other things of value in America.

D) They have internalized guilt about American society.

2. Why does Coates find the patriotism after 9/11 ironic?

A) Americans had little desire to address the problems that led to the attacks.

B) People suddenly cared about a nation they had previously largely ignored.

C) Black people were expected to fall in line again.

D) America has been terrorizing Black people for centuries.

3. What does Coates think of New York?

A) He thinks it is a testament to the power of diverse societies.

B) He feels it has much more segregation and discomfort for Black people than he anticipated.

C) He thinks it is a place where Black people can rise to importance.

D) He feels uncomfortable with its diversity after living primarily in Black neighborhoods.

4. How are narratives about destroyed Black bodies shaped in the public consciousness?

A) They are seen as the fault of the individual who was killed.

B) They are seen as an outrage that must be addressed.

C) They are seen as commonplace or not noteworthy.

D) They are seen as an outgrowth of American history.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Coates see as the root cause of police violence?

2. How does Coates feel about the calls for forgiveness at Prince Jones’ funeral?

3. What does Coates think about white families who take up space on the sidewalk in New York?

4. How does Coates interpret the threat of arrest the white man levies against him?

Chapter 2, Pages 98-131

Reading Check

1. What does Coates think is missing from discussions of the Civil War at battlefield sites like Gettysburg?

2. Who does Coates take his son to meet?

3. Where does Coates travel abroad?

Multiple Choice

1. What does Coates realize about the destruction of the Black body when he visits Civil War sites?

A) It is a kind of heritage.

B) It is not a new phenomenon.

C) It does not factor into the motivations of soldiers.

D) It was a key part of the historical narrative these sites put forward.

2. What does Coates think about the wealthy Black people he meets while reporting in Chicago?

A) They have escaped the problem of the Dream.

B) They are hypocrites.

C) They are survivors.

D) They are entirely different from him.

3. What does Coates feel while he is abroad?

A) He is discomfited by his sense of alienation.

B) He is free from the mental bondage of being in America.

C) He is unable to relax.

D) He misses the conflicts that have defined him.

4. What did Coates have to learn from Samori’s mother?

A) how to navigate white spaces

B) how to set boundaries in his home

C) how to compromise

D) how to be tender with his son

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is Coates trying to teach his son by visiting Civil War sites?

2. What does the mother whose son was killed tell Samori?

3. Why does Coates think Samori’s mother is better equipped to understand the Dream?

4. What does Coates see as the thing keeping him from the world?

Chapter 3, Pages 132-148

Reading Check

1. What has Dr. Mable Jones accomplished in life?

2. What is the significance of the Jeep that Dr. Jones buys Prince?

3. What does Coates urge his son to do in the closing paragraph of the book?

Multiple Choice

1. Why does Dr. Mable Jones compare herself to Solomon Northrop?

A) His son was killed as well.

B) He is her ancestor.

C) She sees herself as an unjust victim of circumstance.

D) It only took one incident to put her back in bondage.

2. Why does Prince Jones decide to attend Howard?

A) He wanted to honor his mother’s wishes.

B) He was tired of being a symbol.

C) He wanted to move to the city.

D) He was following his girlfriend.

3. Why does Coates revise his opinion of Civil Rights photographs of nonviolent protests?

A) He had only considered them from the perspective of his own generation.

B) He realizes there was no other choice.

C) He sees that they aren’t shameful, just true.

D) He thinks he should honor the tragedy even if he disagrees with the politics.

4. Why does Coates think Black people will be unable to end racism?

A) because they are disincentivized from organizing

B) because there’s a widespread belief that racism has already ended

C) because white people must stop themselves

D) because they don’t have access to political power

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Dr. Mable Jones regret about her son Prince?

2. What does Coates see in the homecoming crowd at Howard?

3. What does Coates assert Black people have done in response to being made into a race?