The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir

Quick delivery…. Well packaged.

This is an adaptation of the bestseller, which was not advertised on this page initially. As a result I did end up feeling rather dismayed since the paper-thin book did not really justify the amount of money spent on it. Nevertheless, it is Coates' story (albeit a bit censored), and is just as poetically written as his other works. I did request a return via the Amazon app (very clearly remember putting in my return request reason too, and kept the book wrapped snug in its original packaging for weeks lol) but for some reason it must not have gone through, and now I have no choice but to keep this book. Mind you, Coates is brilliant and it is well worth having a copy of his work with you, but readers should also be aware that this is a slightly more sanitised version of the bio intended for "YA" audiences. The seller should advertise it correctly so no one else ends up with the wrong copy of a book like I did.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of one of the best written and more important non-fiction books of the last 25 years: “We Were Eight Years in Power”, his best book so far and which is all in one: an autobiography, a history book, an essay on the American society in the beginnings of the XXI Century, a case for the reparations for the slavery years in America, a cultural self-help manual, a chronicle on the Obama Presidency, a report on the current estate of the racial issues in America; and then else. That important “else” is the two main factors around which Coates have built the ten first years of his career, first as a journalist then as a writer.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.

Having just read 'Between the world and me', I was eager to dive into another piece of Coates' work as he is truly a phenomenal writer. I was happy to see his familiar writing style in this brilliantly crafted memoir, one that is just as hard to put down as his latest national book awarded masterpiece. Coates is truly the new voice of black intellectualism and has a way of conveying important messages that are raw, gripping and unapologetic in nature. Quite frankly, I'm amazed that he has only written two books thus far and eagerly await his next project.

This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. The author is MUCH MORE famous for his other book, but this one was like reading poetry, and it's a memoir. And if you are a part of white America and feel out of touch with the black experience and want a safe look in, especially because it's pretty violence adjacent, it's like a diorama. And haters I'm not saying his one experience is a representation of every 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 artist rich. It is so beautifully written I read every sentence over and over and over. I usually read 4 books a week. I'm a reader. I read 2 fiction and 2 non-fiction; I read fast and I read for pleasure. I don't do this- or haven't ever done it before, but I read every sentence at least twice. You MUST get and read this book, and buy 2 because if you love anyone who likes to read or likes poetry or storytelling, you're going to want to give them a copy too.