Personal Statement: The First Year Reading Experience

I am a freshman at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and I am writing this letter to share a new program with you. Appropriately named, the First Year Reading Experience program was created to implement a life-long interest in active reading and impart a community or sense of belonging among incoming first-year students, staff, and faculty. This program is built around the concept of a common reading experience that will spark conversations, break boundaries, and help freshman students to become part of the larger university as a community. The First Year Reading Experience program has been implemented by several universities and was adopted by UTC just a few years ago. Since its inception, I myself, have seen and experienced the

It follows the events and what happens while Coates is growing up and then the events of today in Samori’s life. I believe this quote from the book summarizes exactly how Coates sees racism in the world, he tells his son, “You are human and you will make mistakes. You will misjudge. You will yell. You will drink too much. You will hang out with people whom you shouldn’t. But the price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen, and so that America might justify itself the story of a black body’s destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or

After all, Malcolm X became Coates’ favorite writer. The image of a young Malcolm dressed in a sharp business suit, tie hanging askew with one hand parting a window shade and the other holding a rifle, communicated everything that the he aspired to be: “controlled, intelligent, and beyond the fear.” The desire to overcome his sense of ever-present fear led the author to search for role models who appeared to have overcome theirs. Coates son, Samori, was so distraught when the killer of a young black man got off scot-free that he went to his room and cried. Trayvon Martin was killed by a white neighborhood watchman while walking home at night and looking suspicious. Coates let his son cry for a while before going in and explaining to him that he’s just going to have to learn to live with it because that’s how it is for blacks, he will always have to be careful and think twice. The essential question of Coates’ memoir is “How do I live free in this black body?” Coates believes that race is because of racism, and that no one is white they just believe that they are, which also means that no one is black, but they’re just told and shown that they are. He asks himself and other black people how they can live freely, without a constant presence of fear in America. On a deeper level, he also asks how he can transcend the fear and racism that he has