foggy_rosamund 's review for:

Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man by Thomas Page McBee

2.0

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Originally a piece of journalism, this account describes McBee learning to box in order to take part in a charity boxing match. McBee is trans, and wanted to learn about the hyper-macho world of boxing in order to better understand masculinity and his own relationship with being a man. Like many pieces of work that began as journal articles, this narrative doesn't entirely fit together, and thought it's less than 200 pages, still feels long. McBee describes the world of boxing gyms, and the meeting of working class and wealthy worlds within them. He interrogates the ways in which boxing reflects masculine ideals, and the ways in which fighting in the ring allows men to take care of one another and break down the artificial barriers created by toxic masculinity. However, McBee is specifically looking at one form of masculinity -- white, American, traditional -- and the book lacked scope, focusing too much on very simplistic concepts. Like many American writers, McBee approaches specifically white, American problems as though they are universal, and doesn't realise he's blinkered. There is some beautiful writing in here, and McBee writes about the boxers he meets with great tenderness, and evokes the tensions of the fights in a palpable way, but I think this would have functioned better as an essay or article and doesn't hold together as a longer piece.