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Atlantic magazine’s national correspondent and columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates will lead an open discussion 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Kula Café on his Fourth of July article “Letter To My Son.”

The article is an excerpt from Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” an open letter to his teenage son on being a Black in America. Coates traverses a landscape from the historical violence against Black people to institutional racism and the policing of today’s Black youth.

He has said the book stemmed from the murder of a college friend, killed by police in a case of mistaken identity.

Coates, 40, is a Baltimore native who graduated from Howard University.

His career began as a journalist for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper and Time magazine. He’s contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, and O magazine.

In 2008 he published “The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.”

Between the World and Me won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and was the recipient of a “Genius Grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2015.

He also won the 2012 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, the 2013 National Magazine Award in Essays and Criticism for “Fear of a Black President,” the 2014 George Polk Award for his commentary “The Case for Reparations,” the 2015 Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice also for “The Case for Reparations,” and was named a 2015 American Library in Paris visiting fellowship.

To read a copy of the July, 4, 2015 article “Letter to my Son,” visit the Atlantic’s website.

The Kula Café is community eatery that provides paid job training, created an urban garden, and offers afterschool and weekend programs to the city’s youth. It is located at 1201 Springwood Ave.  

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