The Legends Way Up To Greatness


Mohaned Aljundi

Becoming Kareem: Growing Off And On The Court
By: Kareem Abdul Jabbar

             Harlem, NY, 1960’s. Racism is lurking in all parts of the city. Can an African American boy overcome his oppressed background and fulfill his lifelong dreams? In Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court by Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Kareem shares his thoughts and experiences as he lives in a segregated time where black people weren’t treated the same as others. This led Kareem to feel isolated, afraid, and very different among his classmates. Growing up as a black kid, Kareem had trouble finding who he was and what he wanted to do with his life. As he got older, he got picked on more and more because of people's “ Attitude” (Jabbar 55) towards him and his race. This made him very shy and he stopped wanting to stick out so he wouldn't get bullied. As he found out more about the horrible things that were being done to African Americans around the country; he felt like the racism being fought on the streets were both “ angering and inspiring” (Jabbar 65). Despite being very talented in basketball, he felt like he needed to do something else to impact the conditions of African Americans. During his childhood, he wrote many articles about racism and segregation for the "Harlem Youth Action Project" (Jabbar 96)  ( HARYOU-ACT.) This was the time when young Kareem began to take action and stopped “waiting for others to do the right thing” (Jabbar 89).

            Overall, this book is one of my favorite books. It's very personal to the reader and takes you through a real-life journey of one of the greatest athletes of all time. This book also gives the reader insight on black children living in New York during a very segregated era and what emotions they went through at this time. This book intrigued me when I saw it because Kareem is very famous and I wanted to know more about his life. I was quickly surprised at what the book focused on. Being a sports-related book, I assumed that it would focus on playing basketball and Kareem's experiences in the NBA. However, I was shocked to see that the book focused more on his early experiences with racism and his thoughts and feelings living in that time. I could tell that Kareem was very invested in this book and made it very personal to him as he talked about specific moments of his life which were so important that he remembers them even after 50 years. To me, I think that it was a good thing that he didn't just write about his time in the NBA because it gave me the opportunity to know him more as a human than an idea I developed in my mind. This book gives a lot of inspiration for the readers since it shows many important life lessons that Kareem learned throughout his life.

          I would recommend this book to people that are interested in learning about racism in the ’50s and to people who are basketball fans because this book tells a background story of one of the best to play the game. It has a nice mix of basketball experiences and sad moments where Kareem felt like him and his race were not being treated equally. Overall, it’s a very good book that is interesting and really captivating to read and think about.

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