{"product_id":"the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir","title":"The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates","description":"\u003ch2\u003eThe Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn exceptional father-son story from the National Book Award–winning author of \u003cem\u003eBetween the World and Me \u003c\/em\u003eabout the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePaul 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmong his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically mis-calibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Beautiful Struggle\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith 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 a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003ePraise for The Beautiful Struggle\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e“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.”\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—Michael Chabon, bestselling author of \u003cem\u003eThe Yiddish Policemen’s Union\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier \u0026amp; Clay\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e“Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip hop generation.”\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—Walter Mosley\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bust-Down Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50303198069051,"sku":"0385527462","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0855\/2077\/7531\/files\/6612853482325.jpg?v=1747481420","url":"https:\/\/bustdownbooks.com\/products\/the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir","provider":"Bust-Down Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}