The Beautiful Struggle (Adapted for Young Adults) by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Author:Ta-Nehisi Coates [Coates, Ta-Nehisi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies), Young Adult Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, General, Family, Parents, People & Places, United States, African American
ISBN: 9781984894021
Google: hu8OEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2021-11-15T23:19:14.568958+00:00

I wore a powder-blue short-sleeved shirt, matching navy Travel Fox, and stonewashed jeans. I had a green tie-dyed book bag, with twin yellow ropes in place of straps. The back festooned with buttons, the totems of my champions—Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X. I was fly—my cut, two days old, tops. The angles of my lineup could have cut the chains, freed the slaves. Likely, I hung a wooden ankh from my neck. Likely, I was armed with Knowledge of Self—The COINTELPRO Papers or A Panther Is a Black Cat.

I was thirteen, but I carried that thing, stepped off the porch with the bop of God’s son, floated across the black parking lot of Mondawmin, paid my fare, descended the cavernous escalators, then trained up to Rogers Station. I was still a transfer and bus ride away, and yet I was overcome by status. Through all my terror and trembling, through all my torpor and dim wits, I had conjured this passport into the royal city. I wish I had paused on that long subway platform, closed my eyes, and inhaled. I wish I had acknowledged the feeling, held it close, and understood that it was not forever. But I was young and immortal, so I bounded down two escalators, walked a few yards, then emerged into the sunny basin beneath the station.

Rogers Avenue was humming, dozens of buses bound for everywhere pulled in and out of their hubs. Kids gathered in smiling packs, more free than any schoolchildren I’d seen in two years. I was alone, but now Original Man and unafraid. I had survived jumpings and kids in hoodies, hands in deep pockets threatening to pull out. I had survived my father, his many books and hands that were boulders. I had survived the shadow of Big Bill and emerged not a man of streets but of Knowledge.

I stood off to the side, all Nobody Smiling, affecting a measure of cool, representing William H. Lemmel. I caught the publicly chartered 33. poly/western scrolled across the front like destiny. When I boarded at Rogers it was half full, but as we rolled down Wabash and across Cold Spring Lane it swelled with other kids like me but not. They were gifted, but had been sheltered in more forgiving schools and hailed from neighborhoods with detached houses and lawns built for tackle football in the fall. This was still the West Side, and so they wore the reserve of that shackled land. But they had reclaimed their laughter, and deployed it without regard for weakness or what it might say.

We dismounted the 33 bus in front of the campus, and joined a gathering throng buzzing about the first day. I was amped, but played low-key. I scouted immediately for girls, and what I saw disrupted cognition. There were honeys from across the city—Westport, Hollander Ridge, Gwynn Oak, Northwood. They were everything from redbone to yo-yo darkskin. The dimes among them carried Benetton bags, were dolled up like Lily Powers—finger waves, a head of dyed blond, and eyes like enchanted daggers.

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