A Show of Hands: Boxing on the Border

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Once past the annoyance of flipping from the black-and-white photos of
fighters and their thoughts to the back page where the names of the
subjects are listed (would it have been so difficult to have the credits
on the same page as the photos?) it is hard not to be appreciative of
this collage of young boxers.

Gervais, a Windsor, Ontario, poet, photographer, and journalist has
compiled a pictorial tribute to the denizens of the Border City Boxing
Club in Windsor and the Kronk Gym across the river in Detroit. Boxers
from the ages of 8 to 21 are profiled in pictures and, revealingly, in
their own words, as they explain to the reader (and to the spectators at
the Art Gallery of Windsor where the photos and commentaries were on
display in September 2004) why they, in Gervais’s words, “live this
life with purpose … live this life with dreams.”

Boxing, Gervais admits, is a sport where the “object is to score
points by hitting someone in the head.” But the author never attempts
in this book to defend fighting’s brutality. Nor does he make the
familiar case that boxing builds the confidence of residents of the
ghetto. Instead, he presents his youthful subjects (of both sexes) and
their coaches, in their own words, limiting his own commentary to
introduction and conclusion. A good job.