In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the Twentieth Century
This collection of nine essays on race, sports and the cultural collision of both cuts a wide swath, touching on, among other things, Rocky, Rush Limbaugh, Cricket (the British sport that involves something like a baseball bat) and the all-too familiar tomahawk chop. In "Backfield in Motion," Joel Dinerstein discusses how "African Americans create permanent changes in American sports once they attain a certain critical mass," and segues to a lengthy discussion of how white coaches and players view touchdown dances and other victory celebrations as "a lack of emotional self-control," while blacks "consider sports, dance, music, language, and humor along a continuum of performance." Tried-and-true topics (the denigration of Native Americans through team mascots) seem discussed to death, especially when compared to Carlo Rotella's lively deconstruction of the Rocky movies, and the conclusions can place too much importance on sports' cultural value. (Does a better West Indies cricket team really have much to do with forging "new and multiple identities of personhood, nationhood, and masculinity?") Academic in tone (all but one of the essayists hold university posts), much of the content would either bore or go over the head of the average armchair quarterback, but scholars, critics and commentators will find no dearth of opinion and research to cheer or jeer.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.