Hustling or Hooping
Hustling or Hooping

Author: Bernard Jamar Haynes

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2007-08-28

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 1463464525

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Kalif Brown is an inspiring basketball star, who has what it takes to make it to the NBA. Hes a high school senior with big dreams. But his off the court lifestyle of drugs and guns, may land him in jail or dead. Growing up in a drug infested neighborhood filled with junkies, and criminals, doesnt make his situation any better. And like most young black men and women hes living in a single parent home with his mother. He doesnt have a father figure; therefore he turns to a local dealer to fill that image of a father. Kalif must make a choice. Will it be Hustling or Hooping? And he must make this decision fast because his dreams and life may depend on it. Many young inner city athletes and those not into sports, deal with the pressures of everyday life. And many find it hard to deal with especially if they dont have anyone to talk to. Hustling or Hooping may be a fictional book, but there is a Kalif Brown in every urban city in the U.S. Many young black men grow up fatherless, and turn to the streets for a family. The out come is usually negative. But many do make it out of their situations. This book is highly recommended for any young man, or woman who is growing up in a negative environment, and feels as though he or she cannot make that change for the good. This book can be a tool, to make that negative situation a positive one. But also this book reveals the consequences of not making that change for the better.

The Hustle
The Hustle

Author: Doug Merlino

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2010-12-21

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1608193497

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The experiment was dreamed up by two fathers, one white, one black. What would happen, they wondered, if they mixed white players from an elite Seattle private school - famous for alums such as Microsoft's Bill Gates - and black kids from the inner city on a basketball team? Wouldn't exposure to privilege give the black kids a chance at better opportunities? Wouldn't it open the eyes of the white kids to a different side of life? The 1986 season would be the laboratory. Out in the real world, hip-hop was going mainstream, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson ruled the NBA, and Ronald Reagan was president. In Seattle, the team's season unfolded like a perfectly scripted sports movie: the ragtag group of boys became friends and gelled together to win the league championship. The experiment was deemed a success. But was it? How did crossing lines of class, race, and wealth affect the lives of these ten boys? Two decades later, Doug Merlino, who played on the team, returned to find his teammates. His search ranges from a prison cell to a hedge fund office, street corners to a shack in rural Oregon, a Pentecostal church to the records of a brutal murder. The result is a complex, gripping, and, at times, unsettling story. An instant classic in the vein of Michael Apted's Up series, The Hustle tells the stories of ten teammates set before a background of sweeping social and economic change, capturing the ways race, money, and opportunity shape our lives. A tale both personal and public, The Hustle is the story a disparate group of men finding - or not finding - a place in America

There's Always This Year
There's Always This Year

Author: Hanif Abdurraqib

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2024-03-26

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0593448812

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “powerful” (The Guardian) reflection on basketball, life, and home—from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America “Mesmerizing . . . not only the most original sports book I’ve ever read but one of the most moving books I’ve ever read, period.”—Steve James, director of Hoop Dreams Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and countless others weren’t. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling. “Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father’s jump shot,” Abdurraqib writes. “The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time.” There’s Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it’s basketball, or music, or performance—Hanif Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.

Through the Hoop (1979)
Through the Hoop (1979)

Author: Tema Okun

Publisher: The Institute for Southern Studies

Published:

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Through the Hoop To arc a jump shot through the orange rim . . . to tap in a rebound . . . putting the ball through the hoop represents a transcendent moment in basketball for player, team, and crowd. Such a moment exists in every sport. But to enjoy it, fans and athletes alike are often forced through other kinds of hoops. Sports can be violent, lonely, poetic, painful, uplifting. It can breed fitness or injury, sufficiency or dependence, pride or prejudice, friendship or hostility. When does the discipline of sport become dangerous obedience? When does self-mastery become self-aggrandizement? When does athletic activity cease to be empowering for the participants and fans to become an exercise of power over us? Answers to such questions are hard to find. Sports, unlike most topics previously addressed in special issues of Southern Exposure — labor, women, folk life, health, prisons — has never had a network of informed progressives working outside the established channels, posing critical questions, offering insightful direction for our thinking and doing. Trusted commentators and friends who know where they stand and why with regard to other central aspects of our culture shy away from giving serious thought to sport. As a result, many of us are left with personal confusions brought on by alternating experiences of frustration and fulfillment: How do we talk about a subject that on the one hand can be so easily criticized for abuses and on the other hand remains so compelling? How do we effectively criticize the sports establishment that manages ACC basketball or NFL football when we find ourselves glued to the set at playoff time?

Forever My Brother
Forever My Brother

Author: Isaiah Bealer

Publisher:

Published: 2018-10-24

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1483485013

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Forever My Brother showcases the lives of four black male youth growing up in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio. Although, they have no blood relations, the bond they share on and off the court gives them a lifestyle of brotherhood that they hold close to their heart. Nevertheless, the challenges and pressures that come from sports, the streets and the politics of everyday life put a test to their brotherhood. The question for Malachi, T.C., Rob and J.B. is can they stay true to the loyalty they have to each other while still pursuing their own best personal interests.

Plight: a Story for the Next Generation
Plight: a Story for the Next Generation

Author: Shon Diaz

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2020-08-13

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 1728370329

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This story is intended to reach anyone who is or has gone through a hard time in life. The word “plight” is a noun that means a dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unfortunate situation; something that if you live life long enough you will eventually face. The important thing to know when facing an unfortunate situation is that you have two choices, either let it get the best of you or find a way to overcome it. Hopefully this story helps you make the right choice when you face your plight.