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A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Book Reviewed by:An exceptional father-son story 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 a
small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and
beyond.
The following essay is adapted from Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The
Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood".
My older brother, Big Bill was a disciple of the Golden Years—a kid who
knew the difference between Jock Box and the original DMX, a kid who could speak
on the wonder of Jazzy Jeff pulling transformers and bird-songs from black
vinyl. In those days, to be a black boy was to beg your parents for a set of
Technic 1200s turntables and an MPC sampler. Failing that, it meant banging on
lunch tables and beat-boxing until you could rock the Sanford & Son theme song
and play.
Deep in the basement of West Baltimore, Bill stood in his homeboy Marlon's
basement holding the mic like a lover. They called themselves the West Side
Kings, which meant Marlon cutting breakbeats and Bill reciting battle rhymes
he'd scrawled in a yellow notepad. He would come home with demos, play them for
hours, and rap along with himself. This went ...
Coates's description of his growing years in drug and violence-riddled West Baltimore is simultaneously ugly and beautiful – a glimpse into a city of barely controlled chaos and a portrait of a father clinging and dragging his children into safe adulthoods. The author's honesty is unflagging, revealing flaws in himself just as easily as those he observes in his father, brother, teachers and friends. His language flows from the page to the ear, producing a silent chorus of hip hop rhythms, street speak and African tribal beats in the mind. Though the book's vernacular may not be familiar to everyone – I confess to needing a dictionary for many terms and phrases – Coates's relaxed and rhythmic language creates a lasting impression. The Beautiful Struggle is a compelling blend of family memoir and social commentary, a book worthy of a wide audience...continued
Full Review
(509 words)
(Reviewed by Stacey Brownlie).
James McBride, author of The Color of Water
A superb debut by an extraordinary young talent. Coates describes with poetic eloquence another country that is, most painfully, ours; the father who raised him is a smoldering fire whose boundless love reaches across the room; his older brother Bill is a willow tree, bent low against the wind, and young Coates a child who, without bitterness or rancor, bore witness to the flight of his own innocence. Michael Datcher, author of Raising Fences
An intoxicating reminder of why we carry worn paperbacks in our coat pockets, fall asleep with memoirs on our chests. We want to believe in the promise that great literature can make us see ourselves anew. With his lyrical language, zoom-lens detail, and seductive storytelling, Ta-Nehisi Coates proves himself to be a promise keeper. Michael Eric Dyson, author of Know What I Mean?
A searing and soulful memoir of a black father and his sons that tells the truth about the virtues and costs of the black freedom struggle. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a sharp-eyed, quick-witted observer whose haunting eloquence and lively intelligence introduce to us one of the most brilliant writers of his generation. Neely Tucker, author of Love in the Driest Season
A beautiful story of manhood from a beautiful American city, where emotions fall as hard as rain and can prove to be just as cleansing. But the most remarkable thing in The Beautiful Struggle is the voice of Ta-Nehisi Coates, which lingers in the ear. A find you're not likely to forget.The author's father, Paul Coates, was a member of the Black Panther Party. As Coates describes in his book, the Party's original aims concerned self-defense and social justice. Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Party in 1966. Its diverse membership, however, made cohesion difficult and produced geographically clustered varieties of the socialism, counter-culturalism and Black Nationalism for which the Party became known. The Black Panthers frequently clashed with law enforcement: FBI Counter Intelligence Programs (COINTELPRO), for example, investigated the group's alleged connections to communism and hate-related violence across the U.S. Many in the Black community felt that the police and government were unfairly ...
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