02671cam a2200457 i 4500 877358286 TxAuBib 20230630120000.0 090108s2009||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9780385527460 pbk. 0385527462 pbk. 9780385520362 0385520360 TxAuBib rda Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The beautiful struggle : a memoir / Ta-Nehisi Coates. beautiful struggle : a father, two sons and an unlikely road to manhood. 1st paperback ed. New York : Spiegel & Grau, 2009. 227 pages : map, genealogical table ; 21 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier 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. 20230630. Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Coates, Ta-Nehisi. African Americans Maryland Baltimore Biography. African Americans Maryland Baltimore Social conditions. African Americans Biography. Fathers and sons Maryland Baltimore Biography. Street life Maryland Baltimore. African Americans. African Americans Social conditions. Fathers and sons. Baltimore (Md) Biography. Maryland Baltimore. Autobiographies. Biography. Autobiographies.