Lindsay Johns

Escape from the hood

Ta-Nehisi Coates — a name we should all be getting to know — describes escaping the black ghetto for university life in an inspiring memoir, The Beautiful Struggle

issue 07 May 2016

The author of the bestseller Between the World and Me and recipient of a MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ last year, Ta-Nehisi Coates is a much-lauded African-American journalist on the Atlantic, best know for his trenchant 2014 essay making the case for reparations for black Americans.

A bona fide heir to the mantle of ‘hip-hop intellectual’ (last claimed with any credibility by Michael Eric Dyson), Coates is a rara avis, able to move with ease between Rakim, Q-Tip, W.E.B.

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