The Beautiful Struggle

A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood

Hardcover, 256 pages

English language

Published May 6, 2008 by Spiegel & Grau.

ISBN:
978-0-385-52036-2
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OCLC Number:
190784908

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4 stars (1 review)

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 …

10 editions

Subjects

  • Personal Memoirs
  • Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs
  • Biography & Autobiography
  • Biography / Autobiography
  • Biography/Autobiography