Common Reader

The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates

In The Beautiful Struggle we meet Paul Coates: a Vietnam vet and a Black Panther, an old-school disciplinarian and an Aquarian believer in free love, a radical publisher, and a reclaimer of lost histories. Most of all, he was an enigmatic god to his seven children, with a mission to carry them across the shoals of inner-city adolescence and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack. His main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and equipped for the streets. This thrillingly original story about fathers and sons evokes the golden moments within a dark age and chronicles - in startlingly beautiful language - the richly complex interior lives of boys trying to become men.

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The Beautiful Struggle - ebook

The Beautiful Struggle - print book

I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library is open, unending, free.

-Ta-Nehisi Coates