The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir

The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir

An exceptional father-son storyÂ from the National Book Awardâ‚¬â€œwinning author ofÂ BetweenÂ the World and MeÂ about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us.

Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescenceâ‚¬"and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crackâ‚¬"and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free.

Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their fatherâ‚¬s steadfast effortsâ‚¬"assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled presentâ‚¬"to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction.

With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his fatherâ‚¬s generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond.

Praise for The Beautiful Struggle

â‚¬Å“I grew up in a Maryland that lay years, miles and worlds away from the one whose summers and sorrows Ta-Nehisi Coates evokes in this memoir with such tenderness and science; and the greatest proof of the power of this work is the way that, reading it, I felt that time, distance and barriers of race and class meant nothing. That in telling his story he was telling my own story, for me.â‚¬"Michael Chabon, bestselling author ofÂ The Yiddish Policemenâ‚¬ s UnionÂ andÂ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

â‚¬Å“Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip hop generation.â‚¬Å“â‚¬"Walter Mosley
Country USA
Brand One World
Manufacturer One World
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780385527460
Color White
ReleaseDate 2009-01-06
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780385527460

Country	USA
Brand	One World
Manufacturer	One World
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780385527460
Color	White
ReleaseDate	2009-01-06
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780385527460

The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir

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