This compact but powerful work is part memoir (that of author Ta-Nehisi Coates), part lecture (a compassionate warning written by the author for his teenaged son), and part analysis of / commentary on the dangers of being a young, black man in contemporary America. Drawing on more than 100 years of history of black life and experience, the author shows his son and the reader the reasons why black people in general, and young black men in particular, have valid reason to be afraid of the so-called "American Dream”; what that “Dream” means for the black body (in terms of both individuals and the larger community); and where the responsibility lies for transforming both the Dream and those who live in fear within it.
