So! Tomorrow a certain NZ boxer is taking part in a local library storytime. Your guess is as good as mine as to who it is. Actually, your guess is probably better :)
I don't know much about boxing and I'm not afraid to admit that. Anything I've learned is only recent, and I seem to have an interest in the history of the sport, or biographies of boxers. Like this one, for instance, that I picked up: Unforgivable blackness: the rise and fall of Jack Johnson by Geoffrey C. Ward.
Until this book, the only Jack Johnson I'd ever heard of was the singer. You know the guy - Hawaiian-born musician, surfer, filmmaker, etc. THAT GUY who sang with Ben Stiller. (Funny video, by the way). This Jack Johnson is most definitely NOT that Jack Johnson.
The Johnson that Ward writes about was a heavyweight. Literally. He was the first black heavyweight champion in history. As if that isn't enough to make him interesting, the rest of his story is equally as compelling. I mean, here's a guy who lived life as if segregation did not exist. And it got him in a heapload of trouble - time in prison, and seven years in exile. I cannot comprehend that. I truly cannot.
Yikes. My yen to learn more about boxing in an effort to know something about our guest's profession took a turn for the serious. I'm kinda unrepentant about that. It's a great read.
WHO IS OUR GUEST?!
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