A Beautiful Struggle passage

Finished Ta-Nehisi Coates's memoir A Beautiful Struggle. It was a beautiful memoir - moving, poetic, grounded - but most interesting, for me, is the portrait it offered of growing up in Baltimore.

If you've never read it, this is the kind of passage you're missing?

"I had made it through Lemell because my teachers blocked all other doors. They met, organized, double- and triple-teamed us, held us after school, pushed, prodded, until they obliterated job descriptions and fell somewhere between pastor, parent, and counselor. I could match passion with passion. But at Poly teaching was a job. Teachers did what was expected, and thought they could get the same. I demanded more of them, and virtually nothing of myself.

"So this is how my first year in the royal city ended -- handcuffed in the office of the school police. My second semester English teacher was a small man with a small voice. He was my last period, and talked with the sort of dead voice that bore down on my eyelids. I accorded him all the esteem of an anthill, and expected great deference in return. It was one of those spring afternoons at the end of the year, when all your hormones are fighting to break loose. But still, we had to stomach some boring zero prattling on about adverbs, clauses, and conjunctions. Who give sa fuck when you spent the whole day watching Tamara Garrett in tight jeans, and you know she's gonna be on the 44 bus, after school, her lush brown eyes dazzling all comers.

(Coates 139-140)