Cover image for The beautiful struggle : a memoir
The beautiful struggle : a memoir
Title:
The beautiful struggle : a memoir
Summary:
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.
Edition:
Trade paperback edition.
Physical Description:
227 pages : map, genealogical table ; 21 cm
Personal Subject:
Publisher:
Spiegel & Grau,
Publication Date:
2009

2008
ISBN:
9780385527460

9780385520362
Publication Information:
New York : Spiegel & Grau, 2009, ©2009.

©2009
Call Number:
928 COATES
Holds: Copies: