Between the World and Me Major Figures

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author and first-person narrator of Between the World and Me. The book is structured as a letter to his son, Samori, who is about to turn 15. Coates’ purpose is to share and explain his outlook on race relations in America, formed by his experiences growing up in inner-city Baltimore and later career as a writer. Coates reveals himself to be sensitive and unflinching in his candid analysis.

William Paul Coates

William Paul Coates is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ father. A lover of books, he worked for some time at the Moorhead-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He was also a member of the Black Panthers, a controversial civil rights group that flourished in the 1960s. William Paul Coates is portrayed as a strict parent who does not hesitate to inflict corporal punishment on his son. Nevertheless, it is apparent that Ta-Nehisi loves and admires him.

Malcolm X

Malcolm X (1925–65), born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, was a well-known Black leader who joined the Black Muslim movement and preached Black pride and nationalism. He inspired many young African Americans, especially with his life story, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). He was widely regarded as more radical than the other principal civil rights leader of his time, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68). Malcolm X was assassinated in New York in 1965.

Prince Jones

Prince Jones is a fellow student of Coates at Howard University. Tall, handsome, and confident, Jones comes from a well-to-do family—his mother is a medical doctor. His kindness and generosity inspire Coates’ admiration and respect. Coates is shocked and saddened to learn of Jones’ violent death: slain in Virginia, he was the shooting victim of a police officer.

Dr. Mable Jones

Dr. Mable Jones is Prince Jones’ mother. She is the dominant figure in Chapter 3, when Coates travels to visit her at her home near Philadelphia after Prince’s shocking death. During his visit, Coates forms impressions of Dr. Jones’ resilient yet sensitive character. She worked her way up from humble origins, winning a scholarship to Louisiana State University and gaining a medical degree in radiology. In her grief for her son, Mable Jones is portrayed as stoic, enduring, and sensitive.

Samori Maceo-Paul Coates

Samori Maceo-Paul Coates (2001–) is the teenage son of the author. Between the World and Me is constructed as an extended letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son, offering advice and guidance. Samori is evidently a sensitive boy. He is deeply saddened when he learns that the assailants of Michael Brown will not face charges.

Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin is a Black teenager who was fatally shot in 2012 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida. Martin was unarmed. In 2013, a jury found Zimmerman not guilty. The case aroused storms of protest and led to the foundation of the social movement Black Lives Matter.

Eric Garner

Eric Garner is a young Black man who was killed by police in New York in 2014. He is remembered as a generous neighbor and a good father.

Michael Brown

Michael Brown is a young Black man who was killed by police in 2014 in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. No charges were filed against his killer.

Kenyatta Matthews

Kenyatta Matthews is the wife of Coates and the mother of Samori. A strong, independent woman, she first met her husband when both were students at Howard University. She helps Coates to understand the struggles of Black women.

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka (1934–2014), born Everett LeRoi Jones, was an American writer, teacher, political activist and poet. Chapter 2 begins with an excerpt from his poem “Ka?Ba” (1972). Baraka is a prominent literary figure whose work is well known for its power to confront and shock his audience with the realities of oppression of African Americans.

Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez (1934–) is an award-winning poet, a playwright, a children’s author and a professor. She has been a civil rights activist for African Americans since the 1960s. An epigraph from her poem “Malcolm” opens Chapter 1 of Between the World and Me.