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deepwinterodd 's review for:
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
This was an interesting reading experience because I really enjoyed Coates' other memoir, [b:Between the World and Me|25489625|Between the World and Me|Ta-Nehisi Coates|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451435027l/25489625._SY75_.jpg|44848425], a ton. So maybe I had too high expectations for this book. But.
The writing style in this one is very different: poetic, bordering on the lyric poem, and that makes the dialogue a little difficult to follow, but you get used to it.
What I couldn't get used to was waiting for the big reveal; this book is predicated on Coates growing up with his father and brother (he does have a mother, yes, and she is in the book) and he talks early on about how he took a different path than said brother.
But he didn't. Not really.
Or if he did, I couldn't see it. They grow up under the same roof, relatively close in age, and both go through a period of wildness that threatens their futures, and then they both go to Howard. What I was supposed to see as the differences in those journeys, I completely missed. Because I kept on looking for it and looking for it, and I'm still over here trying to figure it out.
Additionally, there's a point in Coates' own journey where he goes from being meek, mild, and picked last for basketball, to a confident, strident, fight-starter, and in the book it's described in the span of one paragraph. There's no explanation (which is possibly too much to ask) or even reflection. Just go in one side of a page getting bullied and feeling awed at the world and then boom, you're king of the block and starting those fights. Sure, that happens during adolescence, but the way it's laid out feels off somehow.
The lyrical poetry of the writing also winds up obscuring the last section of the book, where Coates starts to find romance and has some kind of struggle with school or West Baltimore while also going to what sounds like a legitimately interesting cultural camp and then BAM: Howard University.
I will read so many memoirs, because I find them all fascinating. But I won't take away equally from all of them, and this one will be left mostly on the shelf.
The writing style in this one is very different: poetic, bordering on the lyric poem, and that makes the dialogue a little difficult to follow, but you get used to it.
What I couldn't get used to was waiting for the big reveal; this book is predicated on Coates growing up with his father and brother (he does have a mother, yes, and she is in the book) and he talks early on about how he took a different path than said brother.
But he didn't. Not really.
Or if he did, I couldn't see it. They grow up under the same roof, relatively close in age, and both go through a period of wildness that threatens their futures, and then they both go to Howard. What I was supposed to see as the differences in those journeys, I completely missed. Because I kept on looking for it and looking for it, and I'm still over here trying to figure it out.
Additionally, there's a point in Coates' own journey where he goes from being meek, mild, and picked last for basketball, to a confident, strident, fight-starter, and in the book it's described in the span of one paragraph. There's no explanation (which is possibly too much to ask) or even reflection. Just go in one side of a page getting bullied and feeling awed at the world and then boom, you're king of the block and starting those fights. Sure, that happens during adolescence, but the way it's laid out feels off somehow.
The lyrical poetry of the writing also winds up obscuring the last section of the book, where Coates starts to find romance and has some kind of struggle with school or West Baltimore while also going to what sounds like a legitimately interesting cultural camp and then BAM: Howard University.
I will read so many memoirs, because I find them all fascinating. But I won't take away equally from all of them, and this one will be left mostly on the shelf.