Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Middle Grade | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Introduction-Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “What My Coaches Through Eighth Grade Taught Me”

Introduction Summary: “Every Kid Needs a Coach”

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racial discrimination and racial violence.

Abdul-Jabbar reflects on how he embraced his own path in life instead of allowing outside influences to pressure him into conforming. At the age of 24, after winning the NBA championship and receiving the title of “Most Valuable Player,” Abdul-Jabbar revealed to the world that he had converted from Catholicism to Islam. As part of this conversion, he decided to also change his name from Lew Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. By shedding his old identity, Abdul-Jabbar was also able to rid himself of the last name that his family inherited from slave owners, rather than their African ancestors, whom he wanted to honor. While Abdul-Jabbar felt pleased to embrace his new name, this transformation left many people feeling hurt or threatened, from family and friends to teammates and fans. He attributes this to the unfamiliarity of his new name and faith. Abdul-Jabbar explains that many coaches, teachers, and friends influenced him over the course of his life and career, but in the end, he had to decide for himself which path he would follow.

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “How I Discovered I Was Black”

Abdul-Jabbar recalls growing up in the 1950s in the ethnically diverse neighborhood of Inwood, Manhattan. As a young boy, he enjoyed the variety of cultures, foods, and accents he encountered in his large housing project. He remembers being bullied by a girl who was a few years older than him, but he explains that the local kids did not bully anyone based on their race. His parents did not discuss race or racism with him when he was little, and in hindsight, Abdul-Jabbar feels that he was unaware of the broader discourse around racism in America at that time.

When he was in the third grade, Abdul-Jabbar became more aware of his race when he and his friends developed a Polaroid photo. As the picture instantly developed, he noticed the difference in his appearance compared to his white friends. Abdul-Jabbar was one of very few Black children at his Catholic school, and he felt like being Black was a sort of “secret identity” that set him apart (7). However, as he grew up, being Black made him a target for bullies, and though he tried to be inconspicuous, he stood out due to his height. As a young boy, though, Abdul-Jabbar felt largely unaware of race and remembers having many white friends—most importantly, his best friend, Johnny.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “First Coaches: Mom and Dad Sang the Same Song”

Abdul-Jabbar’s parents strongly emphasized the importance of education and expected him to get excellent grades at school. He remembers being an obedient son and student, always doing his homework and applying himself at school. He enjoyed reading and was ahead of his peers academically. He now recognizes that his parents hoped that he would pursue post-secondary education and settle into a good career with a respectable salary. As an only child, Abdul-Jabbar sometimes wished for a sibling since he absorbed all of his parents’ attention and pressure to succeed. He recalls his structured daily routine when he was a child, and he calls it “boringly predictable” (11).

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Coach Dad’s Quiet Lessons”

Abdul-Jabbar’s father, “Big Al,” was an extremely quiet and introverted man who worked as a transit cop. His father loved reading and filled the house with books, but he didn’t discuss his knowledge with his son. Despite Abdul-Jabbar’s best efforts, he could not connect conversationally with his dad, who often ignored his questions or referred him to books. Big Al had graduated from Julliard, played trombone with jazz musicians, and sang with his wife in the Hall Johnson Choir; he was happiest when he was making music. Without it, however, he seemed sorrowful and cast a “large, cold shadow” over Abdul-Jabbar’s childhood (12). As a boy, Abdul-Jabbar first played baseball, and later developed his interest in basketball. However, he did not connect over sports with his dad, who was a competitive and harsh playmate.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Coach Mom’s Practical Lessons”

Abdul-Jabbar’s mother, Cora, was pragmatic and taught him about how to run a household and maintain a budget. Abdul-Jabbar loved going to the movies with his mom, and he particularly loved Westerns. He was delighted to watch Sammy Davis Jr. star as a Western hero. Abdul-Jabbar loved learning about the real history of Black cowboys and lawmen in the West, and he fantasized about living in that time period himself. He still loves that era of “fierce individualism” and has a passion for the poorly remembered history of Black cowboys in the West (19).

While Abdul-Jabbar was closer to his mother than his father, he felt he had to hide his inner feelings from her and suppress his questions about the world. When he learned more about the civil rights movement from the news, his parents did not discuss it with him; Abdul-Jabbar thinks that it frightened them, even though they stood to gain from its progress. He feels that his mother’s overprotectiveness made him more vulnerable, since no one taught him how to confront racism, which he would soon experience (21).

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Boarding School: Good Boy in a Bad Place”

When Abdul-Jabbar was nine, his parents sent him to Holy Providence Boarding School, a small Catholic boarding school. He soon realized that most of his classmates were sent there by parents and teachers who were tired of their poor behavior and thought that the strict boarding school would reform them. Abdul-Jabbar, on the other hand, was very obedient and high achieving; as a result, his teachers loved him, and the other students hated him. While all the other kids were Black, it was the first place Abdul-Jabbar experienced racism: The other students teased him for being an “Oreo” (a derogatory term that means Black on the outside, white on the inside) since he acted and spoke differently from them. Abdul-Jabbar was tall for his age—he was already five feet, eight inches at nine years old—but he was a gentle kid and hesitated to defend himself physically.

Bullies preyed on him throughout his time at the school, and they often beat him up. Abdul-Jabbar recalls how lonely and abandoned he felt, and how he was confused to be so socially isolated when attending a Black school for the first time.

Despite his terrible social experience, Abdul-Jabbar continued to excel academically and enjoyed playing on the school basketball team. Even though his growth spurts left him gangly and uncoordinated, and he felt he had little talent as an athlete, Abdul-Jabbar loved the sport. After one unhappy year at the school, Abdul-Jabbar returned home, feeling angry and distrustful of his parents, his religion, and his sense of racial identity.

Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Back in Black: A Brand-New Lew”

When he was 10, Abdul-Jabbar returned to living at home and attending his old school. He fondly recalls resuming his old friendships, in particular with his best friend Johnny. However, he felt disconnected from his parents. They continued to emphasize education, but they were unaware of his feelings. Abdul-Jabbar remembers cycling to Little League baseball practice through an Irish neighborhood, where the local kids would chase him and call him racist names. He was confused about why these kids, who were also Catholic like him, would ignore Jesus’ teachings and racially abuse him. This was yet another incident that made him question the role of religion and the church.

By the time he was in sixth grade, Abdul-Jabbar felt a growing distance between him and Johnny. Over time, their friendship diminished as Johnny began hanging out with his white friends, and Abdul-Jabbar struck up a friendship with the school’s new Black students. One day, Johnny instigated a fistfight with Abdul-Jabbar, and Johnny and his friends used a racial slur to refer to Abdul-Jabbar. The following year, Johnny’s family moved away, and Abdul-Jabbar never saw him again. He was devastated that their friendship ended so badly, and although He still had other white friends, this made it more difficult for him to trust white people going forward.

Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “I, Basketball”

When Abdul-Jabbar was in the fifth and sixth grades, he continued to play on his school basketball team, where he felt supported by his coach, Farrell Hopkins. Abdul-Jabbar was often on the bench during games, and he was excited to develop his skills under the mentorship of a college player named George Hejduk, who encouraged him to practice the Mikan drill and the hook shot. Abdul-Jabbar’s hook shot would later gain much attention while playing in the NBA, and he credits this style of shot with helping him attain the record for most points scored over a whole career.

By the time he was in seventh grade, Abdul-Jabbar was a competent player and felt that he had discovered his “superpower.” Playing basketball made him feel confident and powerful; he also felt more accountable to himself to succeed through hard work. He was now six feet, eight inches tall, and he began practicing the slam dunk, which was a somewhat unusual move in the 1960s. As he developed his basketball skills, numerous Catholic schools took notice of him and offered him a place in their high schools. Abdul-Jabbar liked Coach Donahue at Power Memorial Academy in Manhattan, and he decided to accept their offer since he felt he could be a “sports hero” there and not just a “black face” (46). Meanwhile, he continued to feel socially isolated at his school, St. Jude, where the tensions of the civil rights movement made his interactions with white classmates feel awkwardly “formal” and “polite.”

Introduction-Part 1 Analysis

In the introduction to Abdul-Jabbar’s memoir, he establishes the theme of Embracing Racial Identity and Individuality. He explains that as a child he felt pressured to conform to a particular personality, culture, and religion, but he eventually resisted assimilation and followed his own path. As a part of this process, Abdul-Jabbar realized that not all of his early influences, however well-meaning, benefitted him. Instead, he felt that he was taught to let others control him and make decisions for him. He compares his childhood self to a puppet to emphasize his feelings of powerlessness, writing that he “often felt like Pinocchio dancing as someone else tugged [his] strings” (Introduction). However, as he grew older and gradually felt empowered to make his own choices, he felt like “each choice [he] made was [him] cutting another string so [he] could move freely on [his] own” (Introduction).

In the first section of his memoir, Abdul-Jabbar acknowledges that his parents wanted the best for him—namely, for him to access the “life raft” that post-secondary education seemed to provide for minority Americans. He felt suffocated by the pressure they put on him to be obedient and high achieving. By reminiscing about how he longed to live a life that was free from outside influences and authority, the author shows that he began to value individualism from a very early age, even if he was too reserved and obedient to express this.

Abdul-Jabbar’s first impulses to express his individuality were prompted by his love of Western movies. In real life, young Abdul-Jabbar conformed to the identity of a high-achieving, polite, Catholic school boy, but he fantasized about living in the old West. This allowed him to assume a different identity in his imagination. He explains that the West “appealed to that part of [him] that was frustrated with always being the polite, well-mannered obedient Good Boy” (19). In his fantasies about living in the West, Abdul-Jabbar dreamed that he had the power to “[make his] own choices about who [he] should be and what [he] would stand for” (19). This interest in the “fierce individualism” of the West and the Black cowboys who helped shape the landscape has continued throughout Abdul-Jabbar’s life, changing from a “child’s fantasy” to a “source of cultural pride” (19). By revealing his ongoing interest in this period of American history, Abdul-Jabbar shows that his interest in self-reliant individuals began early in life and has continued long after he became a trailblazer himself.

Abdul-Jabbar’s reflections on the parental pressure and the peer pressure he faced in his childhood explain why he would balk at his family, friends, and fans’ expectations that he act like a “typical American kid playing a typical American sport embodying typical American values” (Introduction). Instead, he decided to create a new identity by converting to Islam and changing his name, since this was what he wanted for himself. This individualist approach empowered Abdul-Jabbar, who felt that he had embraced “the American ideal of freedom,” which made him more accountable to himself (89). He explains that “the mistakes were [his] and the successes were [his] because the path was [his]” (Introduction).

The author’s reflections on individuality connect to his memories of how he grappled with his racial identity as a child. By discussing how he experienced rejection and betrayal by both Black and white peers, Abdul-Jabbar divulges that forming his identity as a Black American was a painful and confusing process. Being bullied by his Black classmates ruined the sense of belonging he wanted to feel in a school where, for the first time, he was not a racial minority. Meanwhile, being betrayed by his white best friend caused him to lose his “default trust in white people” and feel “warier, more suspicious” about the possibility of friendship with them (39). These discussions support the idea that Abdul-Jabbar had to foster a strong sense of individuality since, socially speaking, he did not fit neatly into either group. They also pave the way to Abdul-Jabbar’s discussions about how his racial identity later developed as he came of age during the civil rights movement.

Similarly, Abdul-Jabbar’s identity as a Catholic and his relationship with the church changed greatly over the course of his childhood. In revealing his early experiences with the Catholic faith, the author expands on the importance of Focusing on Ethics and Values and analyzes how religion shapes values. As a young boy attending a Catholic school, Abdul-Jabbar knew that “good boys didn’t question the church” and felt that doubting the church’s teachings was “heresy” (34). However, inwardly, the author began to question his faith when he endured vicious bullying at a Catholic boarding school and from local Catholic children in a nearby neighborhood. He couldn’t understand how these children could attend a Catholic church and “receive the same Christian lessons on loving your neighbor that [Abdul-Jabbar] got, yet be filled with such rage and hatred when they saw [him]” (34). Experiencing this vicious treatment from fellow Catholics led Abdul-Jabbar to conclude that there was “something broken in the church,” and this doubt only grew as he got older (34). By sharing his inner thoughts, which he could not express at the time, the author reveals that his seemingly sudden personal transformation and religious conversion had long been simmering under the surface.

By sharing his burgeoning love of basketball and early experiences as a player, Abdul-Jabbar establishes his theme of The Importance of Practice and Hard Work. In the classroom, Abdul-Jabbar was mild-mannered and often picked on by bullies, but on the court, he felt confident and competent. He felt the basketball court was “a sanctuary.” The author connects this new-found confidence with his ability to work hard and build skills. He explains that “[he] discovered it didn’t matter if [he] was a great ball player because [he] could become one if [he] worked hard enough” (42). Abdul-Jabbar notes that he wasn’t an exceptional player when he first started out; however, he kept at the game with “determination and discipline” (42). Gradually, he began to stand out on the court and was offered several scholarships to high schools in New York.