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The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir Paperback – January 6, 2009
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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.
Praise for The Beautiful Struggle
“I grew up in a Maryland that lay years, miles and worlds away from the one whose summers and sorrows Ta-Nehisi Coates evokes in this memoir with such tenderness and science; and the greatest proof of the power of this work is the way that, reading it, I felt that time, distance and barriers of race and class meant nothing. That in telling his story he was telling my own story, for me.”—Michael Chabon, bestselling author of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
“Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip hop generation.”—Walter Mosley
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherOne World
- Publication dateJanuary 6, 2009
- Dimensions4.97 x 0.62 x 7.47 inches
- ISBN-100385527462
- ISBN-13978-0385527460
- Lexile measure1000L
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—Walter Mosley
“Haunting and healing . . . a splendid memoir” —Essence
“A brilliant coming-of-age story.” —People
“A remarkable, blunt portrait of an adolescence filled with danger, chaos, flaws, and tragedy . . . a love story, dispatched from the front lines of a family.”
—Time Out New York
“A searing and soulful memoir.”
—Michael Eric Dyson, author of April 4, 1968
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
There lived a little boy
who was misled . . .
When they caught us down on Charles Street, they were all that I'd heard. They did not wave banners, flash amulets or secret signs. Still, I could feel their awful name advancing out of the lore. They were remarkable. They sported the Stetsons of Hollis, but with no gold. They were shadow and rangy, like they could three-piece you--jab, uppercut, jab--from a block away. They had no eyes. They shrieked and jeered, urged themselves on, danced wildly, chanted Rock and Roll is here to stay. When Murphy Homes closed in on us, the moon ducked behind its black cloak and Fell's Point dilettantes shuffled in boots.
It was their numbers that tipped me off--no one else rolled this deep. We were surrounded by six to eight, but up and down the street, packs of them took up different corners. I was spaced-out as usual, lost in the Caves of Chaos and the magic of Optimus Prime's vanishing trailer. It took time for me to get clear. Big Bill made them a block away, grew tense, but I did not understand, even after they touched my older brother with a right cross so awkward I thought it was a greeting.
I didn't catch on till his arms were pumping the wind. Bill was out. Murphy Homes turned to me.
In those days, Baltimore was factional, segmented into crews who took their names from their local civic associations. Walbrook Junction ran everything, until they met North and Pulaski, who, craven and honorless, would punk you right in front your girl.
Above them all, Murphy Homes waved the scepter. The scale of their banditry made them mythical. Wherever they walked--Old Town, Shake and Bake, the harbor--they busted knees and melted faces. Across the land, the name rang out: Murphy Homes beat niggers with gas nozzles. Murphy Homes split backs and poured in salt. Murphy Homes moved with one eye, flew out on bat wings, performed dark rites atop Druid Hill.
I tried to follow Bill, but they cut me off. A goblin stepped out from the pack--
Fuck, you going, bitch?
--and stunned me with a straight right. 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 to check me, I left only imagination and air. I doubled back to Lexington Market. There was no sign of Bill. I reached for a pay phone.
Dad, we got banked.
Okay, Son, find an adult. Stand next to an adult.
I'm in front of Lexington Market. I lost Bill.
Son, I'm on the way.
I had crossed a border. This was more than Dad's black leather belt--I knew how that would end. But word to Tucker's Kobolds, this thing filing out across the way, lost boys with a stake in only each other, stretching down the block in packs, berserking everywhere, was awful and random. I stood near a man about Dad's age waiting at a bus stop, like age could shield me. He looked over at me unfazed and then back across the streets at the growing fray of frenzied youth.
***
We'd come out that night in search of the wrestlers, who were our latest sensation. They elevated bar fights to a martial art, would rush the ring, all juiced on jeers and applause, white music blaring, Van Halen hair waving in the wind, and raise their chins until their egos were eye level with God. Moves were invented, named, patented, and feared--heaven help Bob Backlund in the camel clutch--and we loved that, too, the stew of language that gave a beat down style and grace, that made an eye gouge a ritual.
You could find us, noon on Saturdays, sprawled out on the living room floor, adjusting the hanger behind our secondhand color TV, until the Fabulous Freebirds, Baby Doll, and Ron Garvin emerged from the wavy lines and static. The wrestlers barnstormed the country perfecting their insane number. They were confused. They ranted with the rhythm of black preachers; wore silk robes, bikinis, and spangled belts; carried parasols; and recited poetry. Glossy mags sprung up from nothing, spread their gospel, their scowling mugs, their hollow threats and lore. They gave dressing room interviews, punctuated by jabs at the air. Whole histories were pillaged, myths bastardized, until Hercules Hernandez stepped off Olympus and the Iron Sheik delivered the Mideast to the Midwest. They held summits and negotiations, all of these ending in a rain of blows.
Other fans had their Hulksters or the golden Von Erichs. But for me only the American Dream could endure.
He waddled down the aisle, bathed in applause and fireworks. His gut poured over bikini trunks. His eyes were black histories.
The Horsemen would tie the Dream to the ropes, beat him until his hair was a mop of bloody blond. I'd cringe and pound the floor, yelling for him to get up. But Bill always rooted for villains, and cackled as Ric Flair strutted the ring, flipping his wig of platinum blond. Then the Dream would dig in, reverse figure fours, throw bionic elbows and Sonny Liston rights. In the midst of his fleeing adversaries--the battered Tully Blanchards and shattered Andersons--he'd look out at the crowd gone mad and snatch the mic like KRS--
It's me, the Great. The king of the ring. Like I told you, the Dream IS professional wrestling. I have been to the mountaintop, and it will take a hell of a man to knock me off.
We had to see them. But that road went right through Dad, whose only point in life was toil. He worked seven days a week. Big Bill called him the pope, for weekly he issued sweeping edicts like he had a line to God. He outlawed eating on Thanksgiving, under pain of lecture. He disavowed air-conditioning, VCRs, and Atari. He made us cut the grass with a hand-powered mower. In the morning he'd play NPR and solicit our opinions just to contravene and debate. Once, over a series of days, he did the math on Tarzan and the Lone Ranger until, at six, I saw the dull taint of colonial power. I am sure this is what brought him comically to our side.
With two tickets to live pro wrestling, he offered a gift and a joke--
Go see Kamala the Ugandan Giant. And you will understand, as I do, that that nigger is from Alabama.
At the Baltimore Arena we were in full effect. We peered down from cheap seats so high that the ring was our own gift box. There were white people everywhere, and this was the most I'd ever seen of them. They wore caps and jeans sliced into shorts; herded kids, hot dogs, and popcorn. I thought they looked dirty, and this made me racist and proud.
I'd like to tell you what immediately happened next. But I don't remember. I was open, and wanted to cheer the Birdman, resplendent in wraparound shades, a Jheri curl, and fluorescent gold-and-blue spandex. He was always oblivious to his theme music. His tune was internal, and maybe that night he dipped and glided toward the ring, flapping his arms and talking to the parakeets perched on each of his shoulders. I wanted to see the Dream, who was at the height of his feud with the Horsemen, and outnumbered, had taken to guerrilla warfare--masks, capes, ambushes, beef extended into parking lots, driveways and dream dates. But I lost it all out there, and when I dig for that night, all that emerges are the tendrils of Murphy Homes, how they dug into my brother's head. He was already a kid of the streets. But this highway robbery, this thievery of your own person, pushed him toward something else. He was touched by the desperate, and now fully comprehended the stakes.
I know that Dad and Ma saved me, pulled up in their silver Rabbit, some time after I made the call; that Dad ran off into the swarming night to find his eldest son, and for the first and only time, I was afraid for him. I know that Bill's mother, Linda, swooped down to the harbor and found Bill first, shuttled him back out to their crib in Jamestown. I know that Bill returned to Tioga days later, and when I told him how I'd dusted Murphy Homes, how I was on some Kid Flash shit, he was incredulous--
Fool, they let you get away so they could chase me.
***
If the newspapers Dad left around the house were true, the greater world was obsessed over Challenger and the S&L scandal. But we were another country, fraying at our seams. All the old rules were crumbling around us. The statistics were dire and oft recited--1 in 21 killed by 1 in 21, more of us in jail than college.
A cottage industry sprung up to consider our fate. Jawanza Kunjufu was large in those days, his book Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys promised answers and so was constantly invoked. At conferences, black boys were assembled. At schools we were herded into auditoriums. At home, mothers summoned us to dinner tables, and there they delivered the news: Our time was short.
***
We lived in a row house in the slope of Tioga Parkway in West Baltimore. There was a small kitchen, three bedrooms, and three bathrooms--but only one that anybody ever wanted to use. All of us slept upstairs. My folks in a modest master. My two sisters, Kris and Kell--when back from Howard University, in an area where Dad also stored his books. There was a terrace out back, with a rotting wooden balcony. I almost died out there one day. Leaning against the crumbling wood I tumbled headlong, but caught myself on the back door roof and came lucky feetfirst to the ground.
My room was the smallest, and always checkered with scattered volumes of World Book, Childcraft, Dragonlance, and Narnia. I slept on bunk beds made from thick pine, shared the bottom with my baby brother Menelik. Big Bill, as in all things, was up top. By mere months, he was my father's first son, but he turned this minor advantage into heraldry. He began sentences with "As the oldest son . . ." and sought to turn all his younger siblings into warriors. Big Bill was seldom scared. He had a bop that moved the crowd, and preempted beef. When bored, he'd entertain himself, cracking on your busted fade, acne, or your off-brand kicks.
***
Bill: Ta-Nehisi, get the fuck outta here with those weak-ass N.B.A.s. Know what that shit stands for? Next time buy Adidas. And, Gary, I don't know what you laughing at in those four-stripe Cugas. Know what that means? Nigger, can u get Adidas . . .
***
In those days, crazy Chuckie threatened our neighborhood. When we lined up for five on five, every tackle he took personally, every block was an invite to scrap. Once he pulled a metal stake from the ground, swung it at fat Wayne until he retreated all the way into our living room. That's when Dad came out and revealed the face of This Is Not a Game. Chuckie cursed and waved the stake. Then he stalked off. That night I lay on the bottom bunk, replaying it all for Bill.
***
Me: Man, Chuckie is crazy.
Bill: Fuck Chuckie. If he ever step to me, I'll fuck him up.
***
That fall, Chuckie killed his father, got gaffled by the jakes, and disappeared into the netherworld of Boys' Village or Hickey Juvenile.
Private school Stevie lived two doors down. I'd sit outside playing with his G.I. Joes until I realized that this made me a target. Across the street was Mondawmin Mall, the fashion seat of West Baltimore, the pit of sex, beat downs, and cool. Every window glittered with leather, fur, sterling, and stickers with large red numbers and slash marks. But the price tags and fat-ass honeys made boys turn killer. One misstep onto suede Pumas, and the jihad begins. In those days cocaine was the air, and though I never saw a fiend fire up, the smoke darkened everything, turned our homey town into a bazaar of cheap ornaments bought expensively, a Gomorrah on the inner harbor. A young man's worth was the width of his blond cable-link chain. The space between two, three, then four finger rings marked footmen from cavalry, cavalry from the great gentry of this darker age. In all our dreams we cruised the avenue in black Cherokee Jeeps, then parked at the corner of Hot and Live, our system flogging eardrums, pumping "Latoya" and "Sucker MCs." Even I shared those dreams, and I was only ten.
While I was hobbled by preteen status and basic nature, Big Bill was enthralled by the lights. This was the summer of '86. KRS-One laid siege to Queensbridge. I would stand in my bedroom, throwing up my hands, reciting the words of Todd Smith--"Walkin' down the street, to the hardcore beat/While my JVC vibrates the concrete." Bill and my brother John spent all summer busing tables. Bill schemed on a fat rope, one that dangled from his neck like sin. Still, his money was young, and he could not stomach the months of layaway. So he returned from the mall with two mini-ziplock bags, each the size of a woman's fist, each glimmering, like him, in the light. They held massive rings, one adorned with a golden kite, another spanning two fingers, molded into a dollar sign.
He flashed them before me, and I was caught by how the glowing metal made him swell inside his own skin. He was profiling, lost in all his glory, when Dad stepped to him.
***
Dad: Son. They're fake. Son, you've been had.
Bill: You're bugging. This is fourteen-karat. I paid cash money.
Dad: Son, Son. Let's have them smelted down and tested. If it's ten karats or more, I will pay you for the rings. With interest.
***
Bill's head went reeling, the dream within reach: He saw a gold herringbone spread over his Black BVD, and when he bopped through Mondawmin, jennys would jump on his jock and soldiers would collapse or salute. In the order of Slick Rick, Bill would wear the scarlet robe. So he agreed to my father's proposition, convinced he was on the better end. We were young, drunk on ourselves, and could not know that all the alleys we took as original, he'd stepped through before. He found a place to smelt the gold, do the math. And I don't know what was worse--the negative results or Dad's rueful chuckle and sermon. Afterward, Dad went over to Mondawmin and had Bill point out the merchants. Then he walked to the glass counter, brandished the results, and spoke magic words. The magic words were "fraud," "Black community," and "State's attorney." Bill never felt the same about gold again.
Product details
- Publisher : One World; Reprint edition (January 6, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385527462
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385527460
- Lexile measure : 1000L
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 4.97 x 0.62 x 7.47 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #61,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #96 in Fatherhood (Books)
- #238 in Black & African American Biographies
- #2,106 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Between the World and Me, a finalist for the National Book Award. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow, Coates has received the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, and the George Polk Award for his Atlantic cover story “The Case for Reparations.” He lives in New York with his wife and son.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book interesting, worthwhile, and great for anyone struggling with discipline and authority. They describe the writing quality as beautiful, lively, and poetic. Readers find the story insightful, inspiring, and refreshing. They also describe the prose as poetic and truthful.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book good, interesting, and worth their time. They say it's a great book for anyone struggling with discipline and authority. Readers also mention the book is unique and wonderful for anyone interested in American culture.
"...author is MUCH MORE famous for his other book, but this one was like reading poetry, and it's a memoir...." Read more
"It’s brilliant every time. Unflinching in its honesty, and brave in its story telling. Still my favorite of Coates’s body of work." Read more
"...Its a quick and pleasurable read." Read more
"Quick delivery…. Well packaged." Read more
Customers find the writing quality of the book beautiful, thoughtful, and intelligent. They say the recollections are brought to life with lively prose. Readers also find the descriptions poetic, truthful, and expressive. They describe the book as a good, easy read that evokes complete understanding.
"...black person's experience, it isn't, I'm saying this book is beautifully written and everyone should read it, and buy it and make this magnificent..." Read more
"...Coates writes beautiful crackling prose that energizes the book. Its a quick and pleasurable read." Read more
"The Beautiful Struggle captured my childhood in words more beautiful, coherent, and insightful than I could have ever mustered...." Read more
"...It's a well written book based on hip hop and hood slang.4 out of 5 stars for me." Read more
Customers find the book insightful, inspiring, and refreshing. They say it's an easy, informative read that thrives on knowledge and experiences. Readers also mention the book portrays the beautiful struggle of Coates' life.
"This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read...." Read more
"It’s brilliant every time. Unflinching in its honesty, and brave in its story telling. Still my favorite of Coates’s body of work." Read more
"...Coates writes beautiful crackling prose that energizes the book. Its a quick and pleasurable read." Read more
"The Beautiful Struggle captured my childhood in words more beautiful, coherent, and insightful than I could have ever mustered...." Read more
Customers find the storytelling engaging, powerful, relatable, and captivating. They also describe the book as a nice coming-of-age story of a black family. Readers also mention it's a courageous tale of struggle.
"It’s brilliant every time. Unflinching in its honesty, and brave in its story telling. Still my favorite of Coates’s body of work." Read more
"A nice coming of age story of a black family, but different from traditional white picket fence stories or ghetto struggles." Read more
"...Action, romance, drama, everything is here. Also a bit of Black Panther Party history, African music study, etc...." Read more
"...This is a gem of a memoir and should be read by all; especially my peers who wonder how, or even if, they can make it in this backward world...." Read more
Customers find the humor in the book witty, poignant, and lively. They also appreciate the author's charm and candor.
"...But the book turned out to be a real pleasure to read. Informative and lively with an interesting and unique style that fit perfectly with the..." Read more
"This book pulled me in from the start. His voice, cadence, wit, and perspective paints a picture that will stay with me forever." Read more
"Mr. Coates writes with passion, intellect, and humor; this really should be read by every American and anyone who wants to more fully understand the..." Read more
"...Written beauty, charm and candour, It is at the same time a window into masculinity and the complexity that besets growing up with the challenge of..." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the book. Some mention it's a great place to start and a good preface to Coates' book, while others say it'll be difficult to get into and the beginning is confusing.
"It was difficult to follow, and rambling in the narrative" Read more
"...This is a good preface to Coates' book Between the World and Me, which I highly recommend." Read more
"This was a very difficult book to get into. The beginning was confusing and didn't hold my interest. I had to abandon this book" Read more
"...in the Atlantic, but I found the book to be boring and generally difficult to follow." Read more
Customers find the book boring and not as enjoyable as the author's blog. They say it doesn't hold their attention and takes a long time to finish.
"...see that this book attracted so many others; however, it was a boring read for me. I'm glad that I'm done reading it...." Read more
"Master of prose, but sometimes a little boring." Read more
"This book did not hold my attention so it took me a long time to finish it." Read more
"...judging from his columns in the Atlantic, but I found the book to be boring and generally difficult to follow." Read more
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Coates writes beautiful crackling prose that energizes the book. Its a quick and pleasurable read.
I think both of these books should be required reading for people like me, that is people who have to check the white, non-hispanic box on surveys. While reading a couple (or a hundred) books will never place you in the shoes of someone who has experienced the struggle in real life, books like this will open your/our/their eyes to what is often swept under the rug as we pretend to live in some sort of post-racial utopia. It's never going to happen if we as a society, we as a country, don't realize, acknowledge, and try to remedy all the harm caused in the black community through decades of legislation. I considered myself conscious before reading any of Mr Coates' work and now feel like I'm on step one again. There is a lot of knowledge out there.
Coates' weaving of cultural references, without explanation, throughout the text played as an inside joke that only those who lived through that time would get. While limiting understanding for those who were not privy to late 80's/early 90's black/hip hop culture, or black activist culture, it did make me feel a kinship with the author as if he were one of the many sons of my parent's Movement friends that came in and out of my life, or one of the neighborhood dudes that I would sometimes kick it with.
I thoroughly enjoyed the read and the walk back through time with a mature perspective as guide.
Top reviews from other countries
This one book, "The Beautiful Struggle" is his autobiography, of sorts.
Born in Baltimore in 1975, Coates grew in a working-class neighbour plagued with gangs and crack in which losing a friend to either of the two was completely normal. His refuge, assisted by both parents (his father was an activist and small-time publisher and his mother a teacher) was the studies, first, and then and more importantly, the library. His personal revelation came from the books – “I was born for the library not for the classroom”, he said. Reading voraciously took him to reporting, and suffering discrimination to go deeper into American History to understand it. His articles for the periodical “The Atlantic” started calling the attention of general readers since 2007, but the publication in June of 2014 of the long piece “The Case for Reparations”, about the right of the American blacks to be compensated for the racism and slavery after the American Civil War, made him a promising star in the cultural world. His “We were Eight Years in Power”, the compilation of eight of his collaborations in The Atlantic (each one roughly to coincide with each one of the years of the Obama Presidency), only confirm his status as one of the best nonfiction writers in English.
With perhaps too much of insistence, he has been appointed as the heir of James Baldwin by such a heavy weight as the late Toni Morrison. It is a fair (and obvious) comparison, but it is still too soon. Baldwin had a very long career – he started writing while the Truman Presidency, just after World War II and in his last articles he commented on the success of Michael Jackson. Yet the vast quantity of the Baldwin's works was matched with quality, and also by a wide and varied range of interests: writer, novelist, polemicist, cinema reviewer, memoirist, orator, and theatre and screen player (he wrote the first draft of the screenplay about the life of Malcolm X in 1968, ultimately filmed by Spike Lee in 1992). James Baldwin belongs to that special breed of writers and commentators of the XX Century – utterly coherent and tireless critics of any form of fascism or totalitarianism, or discrimination and racism, and who also wrote excellent pieces of fiction. This is the class of George Orwell and Albert Camus. And these are big names.
But there are sound similarities between Coates and Baldwin, for instance a superb control of the prose in English – Coates uses effortlessly terms like “carceral”, “survivalist”, “listicle” and yet he is a very easy author to read. Also, Coates keeps a very healthy distance with politics and religion in search for answers. Coates knows full well that the solution to racism lies not in Marxism like Malcolm X (initially) or W. E. B. Du Bois; nor through religions: via the Islam like, again, Malcolm X, nor through Christianity like Dr Martin L King. The answer is moral – paraphrasing Emerson, “why some find pleasure in holding a human being under his absolute control?”
Any flaws? None major. Perhaps a lack of sense of humour, even of irony. We miss it after reading pages and pages some light touch. Coates' style ends up being too serious, almost solemn. And it is not the themes – James Baldwin wrote about the same (and in even harder times) and very often softened his speech with a touch of irony. To quote only one: “my mother had the strange habit of had one baby after another; I remember my teenage years reading and holding the book with one hand and a baby with the other”. We never read lines like these in Coates. He should loosen up a little / after all James Baldwin did it in bleaker circumstances.
In “The Anatomy of Influence”, writing about the rampant degeneration of the American political, social and cultural life in the early XXI Century, Harold Bloom states that one of the reasons for that degeneration is that there're not cultural giants, such as Ralph W Emerson in these times. Now there's Coates. He's not yet a giant, but he's only in his mid forties and has a very long career ahead. Furthermore, he's got the talent and is in the right - Emersonian - side of the reason. He needs just time to express himself.
Reading books like this beautiful struggle, we realise how much the world needs more writers like him.