Director Kamilah Forbes on HBO’s “Between the World and Me”

If you live in America, chances are you’ve heard of the writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and his seminal 2015 book, Between the World and Me. The work, which is written as a letter to Coates’ then-15-year-old son, talks about the atrocities Black Americans have been made to endure throughout history in the United States. The genius of the book is its concision and its masterful use of language. In one moment, we’re dancing with a new love on a college campus. In another, we’re witnessing police brutality and murder a few blocks away. Coates has since won several major awards, including the prestigious MacArthur Genius Grant. 

This winter, HBO released a film based on the book, which was directed and produced by the acclaimed Kamilah Forbes, who first produced the work at the historic Apollo Theater in New York City. Forbes and Coates were friends at Howard University in Washington D.C. It was there a fruitful friendship formed. We caught up with her to ask what it was like to bring the book to life first on stage and then on screen, the emotions she felt doing so and how she first came to love creativity.