Submit well-written, carefully considered responses to the following questions. You may consider this an open-book test, so you may use any of the texts that we’ve read, anything from our course site,...

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1. Discuss the Ta-Nehisi Coates text. What seems to be the most central idea of the book? Support your answer with evidence from the text. The Coates text is the book "Between the World and Me".
    The book “Between the World and Me” is known to be one of those where race is being talked about but is seen as a concept that is flawed and very close to being useless as well and is known to be nothing more than something that forebodes the ideas of racism. Very early on in the book, it is being stated that race is not necessarily something that birthed racism but is actually the result of that (Wooley). It has been seen that the idea of race is known to be something that is so important within American history and the self-identification of the people of the country that the racial designations have always been marking the difference that lay between death and life in certain instances. The book revolves around ideas that indicate how the discrediting of ideas of race being changeable and immutable can alter the ways in which one looks at themselves and at history (Ureña). The book is also about how fear is being described as being palpable in the same describing the sense that the author has of himself along with that of the world. Coates has even written to his son stating that when he was his son’s age he only knew people who were of African-American descent.
    They were said to be adamant, dangerously and powerfully afraid which informs the readers about the distortion in the author’s own life and how it affected the way in which he saw the world. This kind of fear has shown to be questioned as to whether they can be inevitable or not given the circumstances.
2. Define the notion of a coming-of-age text, and use at least one of the texts that we read to demonstrate the components of the definition. The coming of age text you can use is the short story Araby by James Joyce.
    A coming-of-age story or text narrates the circumstances of the youth as they journey into adulthood or as they try to do the same. This fits into the narrative of “Araby” by James Joyce where the story is all about the coming of age of a young boy (Moore). This is a story where the character is seen to be reminiscing about their experiences of youth as an older person now. The...