"The Black Experience Isn't Just About Men" Review: Allie Fenlon, Abby Jiminian, Julia Zaucha, KK Shauh, Samy Rhynard, Kat

Hilton writes her article for Buzzfeed entitled, “The Black Experience Isn't Just About Men”, which is exactly what her article is about. While the very first paragraph makes it clear that this is a review of Between the World and Me and gives a general context to what the book is about, Hilton spends a good portion of the article tangentially relating herself to the novel. She ties the contexts of the book and herself together, as both she and Coates’ went to Howard. She goes into detail about how her experiences as a black woman there are similar to Coates’ in that she found herself at Howard, but her assessment of the novel gives her the opportunity to present her argument that “The Black Experience Isn't Just About Men”. She justifies that Coates’ book is not bad because he doesn’t include women very much, but she still stresses that being black is not the same as being a black male. She uses statistics from her time at Howard to demonstrate that most of the people there are female. While she does defend that Coates’ points are good, she does think that he could have included women more than he did, considering how many there are at Howard. While a good portion of the article thoroughly focuses on this analysis and assessment, Hilton does include the other elements of a review later on. She gives a brief bit of context at the beginning, she includes more after her main point about the role of black females in the black narrative. She talks about how Coates’ personally handed her the book, and she finished it in one day. This gives us a perspective on how she feels about the author, and therefore a foundation on which to base our opinions of her arguments. We can also base our judgements on the other information she includes, like how she is a supporter of Toni Morrison, and acknowledges Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Isabel Wilkerson as accomplished black female writers. At the end of the article, Hilton brings her writing back around to her original point that  black male experience should have the inclusion of the black female narrative, and not be considered the black narrative by itself. It leads to her description of the book, showing that it is a good book, but only talks about a black male narrative. She eloquently compliments his writing in her statement, “I will say though that this was Coates telling his personal experience to his son so if people pay attention they would see that the black experience is very unique to every black person because they are not all the same and will not be in the same predicament so that is where reviewers need to be cautious about telling Coates where he missed out. It was a letter to his son and personalized for a reason”. She concludes her article with the powerful statement, “Black womanhood in real life isn’t — as it largely is in Between the World and Me — about beating and loving and mourning black men and protecting oneself from physical plunder. It’s about trying to live free in a black body, just like a man”.