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<![CDATA[The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood]]>
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<p><b>An exceptional father-son story about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us.<br><br></b>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. <br><br>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. <i>The Beautiful Struggle </i>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. <br><br>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.</p>
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The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood
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Stylistical...more...]]>
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"About that time my Converse turned to cleats and I bolted, leaving dents and divots in the concrete. The streetlights flickered, waved as I broke ankles, blew by, and when the bandits reached ...more...]]>
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To be more precise - this book is, m...more...]]>
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Coates was one of the rare ones in West Baltimore with a father watching over him, a domineering former Black Panther who p...more...]]>
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I wasn't disappointed. The...more...]]>
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Coates obviously turned...more...]]>
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James Agee...more...]]>
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You can hear the complete interview at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...]]>
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Ta-Nehisi Coates word play in this book is one of the most gravitational aspects of this story, alongside his story of him growing up in Baltimore and attempting to find what his manhood is.
Definitely a good read, Go out and Cop it!!!]]>
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see also:
"globalization and race" (Ed) Clarke
"beyond beats and rhymes" (documentary film) byron hurt]]>
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http://el-oso.net/blog/archives/2009/03/...]]>