The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #5: Royal Young in Conversation with...
I was sitting in a hospital chair by the mechanical bed of Muhammad Ali’s ex-bodyguard, Alexander Pridgen. After years of lavishing in limelight as well as dealing with the dark, violent flipside to...
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Paper Trumpets #17: Matador Ali
Click image to enlarge: ***Notes on this collage:Of course, this famous image of Muhammad Ali comes from the heyday of his boxing career, in 1965, when he defeated Sonny Liston in the first round of a...
View ArticleRespect for Muhammad Ali
Bob Dylan released a statement following the boxer’s death. Dylan responded to the news that the 74-year-old legend passed away by referencing the man’s self-proclaimed title, “the greatest”:If the...
View ArticleRemembering the Boxing Poet
He flipped similes and metaphors like a battle rapper holding court in a cipher that was his and his alone. Even his jabs were like couplets that told you more about yourself than you could have ever...
View ArticleThe Perfect Prism: Muhammad Ali and Literature
For the New York Times, Richard Sandomir investigates how Muhammad Ali influenced literature, as his life story functions as “the perfect prism through which to view sports, race, religion, politics,...
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: What’s in a Name? A Tale of Two Alis and Three...
And He taught Adam the names of all things;then He placed them before the angels, and said:“Tell me the names of these if ye are right.”–The Holy Qur’an, Surat Al-Baqarah, 2:31*Muhammad Ali is in the...
View ArticleWeekend Rumpus Roundup
First, the irreverent Jane Eaton Hamilton recounts her history with pulmonary illness in gripping detail in the Saturday Essay. Hamilton, an aspiring animal researcher, discards her educational goals...
View ArticleHometown Hero
At BuzzFeed, Tracy Clayton reflects on returning home to Louisville for Muhammad Ali’s funeral and the ways in which a place and its people can attempt to hold each other:You want to dismantle it and...
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Binary States of America: A Letter to Obama
When I was in third grade, back in the late ’70s in Detroit, I wrote my first book—sort of. It was a class assignment to create a handmade book about what we wanted to be when we grew up. My classmates...
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Khadijah Queen
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Khadijah Queen about her new collection I’m So Fine, the importance of including sexual assault as a part of everyday life, and how the poems in the collection...
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