D&D meets hip-hop

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I just finished reading The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates. He's one of my favorite bloggers, and inspired my recent interest in the American Civil War. It's a great memoir of a spacey black kid growing up in West Baltimore with a complicated family. His dad is a former black panther librarian and publisher hell-bent on keeping his many children from being swallowed by the perils of the street. The memoir is saturated with hip-hop references, which I mostly completely miss, and classic Dungeons & Dragons references, which of course I get completely. He's a great writer and blends street and geek as well as anyone I've read. I highly recommend it.

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