Movie Discussion and Screening Between The World and Me

Publish Date: March 23, 2022

Crafton Hills College held a separate discussion and screening of the HBO special Between the World and Me as part of the ongoing Black History Month celebration and The One Book, One College reading initiative. This year’s book, Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, was adapted to a theater production and the HBO documentary.

The film recounts Ta-Nehisi Coates’ experience growing up in Baltimore, attending an Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) institution, Howard University, and being black in America. Between the World and Me was originally a letter to Coates’ son, Samori, and explores the father/son and child/parent relationship dynamics black parents face. The special included celebrity readings, archival footage of Coates, as well gut-wrenching reenactments by award-winning actors.

The film adaptation uses spoken-word stylings and jazz numbers while asking us to reimagine the boundaries of fear, hope, and racial inequality. The last lines of the film, recited by Coates, bring hope in what feels like a hopeless situation: “The warmth of our particular world is beautiful, no matter how brief and breakable. We have made something down here.They made us into race.We made ourselves into a people.”