The Beautiful Struggle, TaNehisi Coates
The Beautiful Struggle, TaNehisi Coates
2 Rating(s)
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The Beautiful Struggle
A Memoir

Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Narrator: JD Jackson

Unabridged: 6 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 11/14/2008


Synopsis

An exceptional father-son story from the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me 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 adolescence—and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack—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 father’s steadfast efforts—assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled present—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 father’s generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers asmall and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in Black America and beyond.

“Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip hop generation.”—Walter Mosley

About Ta-Nehisi Coates

TA-NEHISI COATES is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Between the World and Me, winner of the National Book Award. A MacArthur 'Genius Grant' Fellow, Coates has received the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, and the George Polk Award for his Atlantic cover story 'The Case for Reparations'. He lives in New York with his wife and son.


Reviews

Goodreads review by C. on April 19, 2009

Along with "Dreams from my Father," I want to add this to the Coming of Age / Memoir unit I teach. Ta-Nehisi is a fantastic writing, and the book moves along with a lightness and wit (I finished the book in under 24 hours) that belies the seriousness of his subject. Stylistically, the book feels as i......more

Goodreads review by Evan on October 29, 2016

Coates’ first book, written seven years before Between the World and Me, is a memoir of Coates’ childhood growing up in inner-city Baltimore. The Beautiful Struggle revolves around the relationship between Coates, his father, and his brother “Big Bill.” Coates’ father, a former Black Panther turned......more

Goodreads review by Vanessa on May 13, 2015

Oh man, I just love him. This is totally different from his blog/twitter postings, but equally awesome along a totally different dimension. I think the writing *occasionally* goes off the rails with some of the flowery, figurative language, but he's also trying to capture the essence of something th......more

Goodreads review by Craig on July 03, 2012

Extremely interesting material that never quite coalesces into either a clear statement or a good read. One of seven children of a black nationalist father, Coates grew up in West Baltimore where he was consistently on the verge of washing out of the educational system entirely. Although he ultimate......more

Goodreads review by BookNightOwl on January 31, 2021

A memoir about the author. Was a little difficult to follow maybe because of the slang or I kind of felt it was all over the place. Still enjoyed reading about the growing up in this Era with a father who fought in the war and was a member in the black panther.......more