Write an essay in which you identify Coates’s primary audience and purpose AND one of his secondary audiences and purposes for his book.

Between the World and Me – Essay Prompt
Topic: Communicating your beliefs to your audience takes careful thought. To be effective, writers must clarify for themselves their purpose for writing and the audience who they are writing to. The three most common purposes for writing are to persuade, to inform, and to entertain. Once the writer establishes their purpose, they must make decisions that help them achieve their purpose with their audience, including decisions about vocabulary and evidence.
Pre-Writing: Consider the book Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Who are some of Coates’s audiences? What are some of his purposes? How do you know? What connections do you see between Coates’s audiences and purposes with the choices he made in his book?
Task: Write an essay in which you identify Coates’s primary audience and purpose AND one of his secondary audiences and purposes for his book. Then evaluate how effective Coates was in achieving each of those purpose(s) with his various audience(s). For example, if his purpose is to inform, what kinds of information was presented and was it presented clearly, accurately, with order and coherence? If his purpose is to persuade, was there convincing evidence and logical reasoning? If his purpose was to entertain, how does the writing affect the reader’s emotions: does it make them laugh, cry, or feel angry?(Notice, this paper focuses on author’s purpose and choices, and less on whether you agree with Coates’s ideas or not.)
When you name the audiences and purposes, you must be as specific as possible. For example, rather than identifying Coates’s audience as “the reader”, consider is he trying to reach adults, or people from a certain racial/ethnic group, or Americans, etc.? And if you think he’s trying to inform his audience, what does he want to inform them about? Remember, you must provide evidence from the book to demonstrate that your claims about audience and purpose are correct. Include at least two quotes from Between the World and Me.

Last Completed Projects