Letter To My Son Analysis

“Letter to My Son,” written by Ta-Nehisi Coates in 2015, was in all essentiality advice. The article begins with the author describing his own sadness at the distance between a country built on a dream, and the sobering reality he saw. He continues on to talk about how his body, his son’s body, and the bodies of many of their peers around them, are very often going to be at the mercy of people around them. Coates then speaks of escaping the danger of having his own body at the mercy of another, and his desire to rescue himself through “a clash with the streets.” Cue a change of tone in the letter as it moves on to speak of the author’s “Mecca”. Which in this case means a holy city, or a place of light and perfection. For Coates, this place