The Beautiful Struggle:A Memoir
A small and beautiful epic of growing up in 1980s Baltimore, from the author of Between the World and Me
The Beautiful Struggle is an extraordinary memoir from the most important new voice in the US race debate and the author of New York Times bestseller list no. 1 Between the World and Me, hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading.”
This small and perfectly formed epic follows the lives of boys on the journey to manhood in black America and beyond in 1980s Baltimore, a city on the verge of chaos. These youngsters needed to learn fast, and Ta-Nehisi’s father, Paul, was a fine teacher: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian, and an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement. The Beautiful Struggle is a moving father-and-son story about the reality that tests us, and the love that saves us.
Reviews
The young James Joyce of the hip-hop generation.
A kind of hip-hop Portrait of the Artist.
A moving father-and-son story … an intense portrait of those whom the black revolution left behind, but who never broke faith with its tenets.
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A beautifully written, loving portrait of a strong father bringing his sons to manhood.
Booklist -
Haunting and healing … a splendid memoir.
Essence -
The single best writer on the subject of race in the United States.
New York Observer -
A remarkable, blunt portrait of an adolescence filled with danger, chaos, flaws, and tragedy … a love story, dispatched from the frontlines of a family.
Time Out New York -
The intellectual heir to James Baldwin.
Financial Times -
Told in a dreamy, lyric register redolent of a voiceover in a movie flashback, The Beautiful Struggle is both a touching portrait of filial affection and a paean to the redemptive power of culture.
Prospect -
One of the most high-profile commentators on race in the United States ...Reading this book is an intoxicating experience
, New Statesman -
This book forces us to ask how far American society has really come, and how much further it has to go.
Financial Times