'The Olympic medal had been the most precious thing that had ever come to me...'

Muhammad Ali: I Am the Greatest

Dr. Maria Preethi Srinivasan our second Delegate on our Books & Coffee Meet presented a review of the book titled, Muhammad Ali - The Greatest: My Own Story, on Friday, 31 July 2020. 

Just a few excerpts for us all, from Dr. Preethi’s review –

Dr. Preethi -

Well, it’s just a happy coincidence that I also have a life-writing for review.

Before that, I would like to read a poem.

There again I see serendipity.

I chose a poem not realizing that it would connect with my book review.

It’s titled, ‘Explosion Contained’.

Just four lines -

I wish I could put my body

through the motions of an explosion.

If you can’t bear to see me dismembered

Do appreciate what it takes to stay together!

I prefer the term life-writing, because I feel it is all-encompassing.

I’ve always looked at life-writings through a lens, and that lens is the power of expression.

Because for me, and for many of us, the power of expression is therapeutic.

So if you’re mapping the journey of the oppressed from silence to the voiced position, and to think that there are so many stories that go unheard because they’ve been untold, the fact that, the story of an African-American in the 1960s has been told, presupposes that, there has been empowerment in his life, a kind of empowerment that has been able to express himself.

His primary mode of expression was his sport – boxing.

We might be amused by his assertion of being the ‘greatest’.

Malcolm X and Mohammed Ali had a very strong friendship.

One of the highlights of his life and his life story is the winning of the Olympic gold medal.

But you know what he did with that medal?

He threw it into the river Ohio!

Why did he do that?

It was the result of a humiliating experience.

He goes into a hotel where they refuse to serve him.

Preethi ma'am then reads out snippets from the Text... here goes...

The Olympic medal had been the most precious thing that had ever come to me.

I worshiped it. It was proof of performance, status, a symbol of belonging, of being a part of a team, a country, a world.

It was my way of redeeming myself with my teachers and schoolmates at Central High, of letting them know that although I had not won scholastic victories, there was something inside me capable of victory.

How could I explain to Ronnie I wanted something that meant more than that?

Something that was as proud of me as I would be of it.

Something that would let me be what I knew I had to be, my own kind of champion.

“We don’t need it,” I said. “We don’t need it.”

SO WHAT I remember most about the summer of 1960 is not the hero welcome, the celebrations, the Police Chief, the Mayor, the Governor, or even the ten Louisville millionaires, but that night when I stood on the Jefferson County Bridge and threw my Olympic Gold Medal down to the bottom of the Ohio River.

It had taken six years of blood, blows, pain, sweat, struggle, a thousand rounds in rings and gyms to win that medal, a prize I had dreamed of holding since I was a child.

Now I had thrown it in the river.

And I felt no pain and no regret. Only relief, and a new strength.

As I had been looking at this book through a certain lens, the lens of how he expressed himself, how he dealt with the trauma of racism, why did he choose boxing?

The thing about Ali is that, he is also a poet!

He tends to compose lines!

All those lines you have in the song are slogans he composes when he challenges his opponent.

“To make America the greatest is my goal,

so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole,

and for the USA won the medal of gold.

Italy said, ‘You’re greater than Cassius of Old,

we like your name, we like your game,

so make Rome your home if you will.’

I said I appreciate kind hospitality,

but the USA is my country still,

‘cause they’re waiting to welcome me in Louisville.”