Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged sports

Surfer Girls in the New World Order

I was twelve years old when my mom moved to South Florida and I was first introduced to surf culture. My step-dad’s shed was filled with boards all different shapes and sizes and on the few rare occasions I did paddle out, it was always with him by my side—and with his help navigating the powerful ocean. I was interested and wanted to learn, but I was scared. I wouldn’t be good enough, I wasn’t strong enough, the boys would make fun of me, I’d get in their way, they wouldn’t like me.

Sport, Power and Society: Institutions and Practices

Presenting the multifaceted world of sports, this book introduces a multitude of perspectives into the sports world. While encompassing many specifics about the whole idea of what makes up sport, this book offers views into aspects that create the sports world into a fully participatory and also a spectator-oriented institution. With many selections of essays that delve into specific topics like ownership, media, participation, violence and more, the institution of sport becomes a full-on demanding, powerful, industry like many other money-making organizations.

Legendary

Inspired by sports movies like Rudy and The Karate Kid, and presenting smatterings of others like Lucas and Hoosiers, the John Cena vehicle, Legendary is the WWE’s ninth foray into the movie making business. The movie centers on Cal Chetley (Devon Graye), a scrawny fifteen-year-old geek who earns pocket money by farming catfish. He’s sweet-natured, and enjoys a tight bond with his mother (Patricia Clarkson).

The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend

One of my most irritating memories of the early and mid-1980s is my younger brother's insistence on having TV wrestling in the background on Saturday mornings. Even at age nine, the “sport” seemed staged, hokey, and fake. But imagine a time when wrestling was based on skill as much as show, when young American women saw it as an escape from poverty as much as a pass into celebrity.

On the Line

I love everything about the U.S. Open except the line calls. I experienced this past weekend's U.S. Open upset for Serena Williams with a different perspective than if I hadn't read her memoir On the Line. The book is written in Serena's voice. It's personal, it's conversational, and that's why I like it. I enjoyed her reflection on her life thus far. I have to say that Serena is a spoiled brat, but that observation comes from her directly.

Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball

Stolen Bases is as intelligent and powerful as any professional U.S. women’s baseball team would be, should be, and could be...if any were supported enough to exist.

No Girls in the Clubhouse: The Exclusion of Women from Baseball

The premise of No Girls in the Clubhouse is that baseball could be successfully gender-integrated at all levels with no disadvantage to either side, but social expectations—not biological deficiency—exclude women from full participation in the sport. Feminists won't be surprised to learn how, in anthropologist Marilyn Cohen's analysis, the historical achievements of female baseball players have been obscured.

The Off Season

This book, the sequel to Murdock’s Dairy Queen, may be marketed for young adults, but it’s not the equivalent of Sweet Valley High or The Princess Diaries, as both the book and heroine D.J. Schwenk have their feet planted firmly in reality. D.J.

Dairy Queen

The word “charming” is too vague, and it makes me think of smarmy real estate descriptions, but…I…can’t…stop…myself. Dairy Queen is just so darn charming that I am forced to momentarily succumb. Catherine Gilbert Murdock has taken a traditional coming-of-age story about a tomboy in a small town and wrung some feisty new life out of it.

Kickoff

If the thought of being 13 again makes you more nauseous than nostalgic, Kickoff is not the book for you. However, if you feel free to channel your inner tween, read on. Donna King, also known as Jenny Oldfield, is the author of several children’s series novels, including the Horses of Half Moon Ranch.

Women and Sports in the United States

As the rather generic title would suggest, this collection is intended as an introduction to a broad field, perhaps a reader useful for a college-level Exercise Science or Physical Education seminar. There are nods to some of the pioneers of sport, essays on gender and athleticism—most of them more journalistic than scholarly—an all too brief treatment of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of A League of Their Own fame. There is a rehash of Brandi Chastain’s exuberant celebration after the 1999 Women’s World Cup and the sexualizing of athletes’ bodies in the media.

Goal Dreams

Originally projected onto the Separation Wall in Palestine/Jerusalem on the eve of the 2006 World Cup, Goal Dreams is a documentary account of the struggles the Palestine National (Football) Team faced to whip up what is so strikingly absent in Palestinian culture: hope. Even if you don’t give two stuffed grape leaves about sports, this edu-docu-drama will capture, break and embolden your heart.
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