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The education of Kendrick Perkins  Cover Image Book Book

The education of Kendrick Perkins / Kendrick Perkins with Seth Rogoff.

Summary:

"The Education of Kendrick Perkins is an intimate memoir about race, fatherhood, and basketball, from former NBA player and outspoken cultural critic, Kendrick "Perk" Perkins. At age eighteen, Kendrick Perkins left his grandparents' run-down yellow house in Beaumont, Texas for the last time. Sure, he'd traveled the country for camps and tournaments. He'd banged and bruised with the biggest and most skilled players the amateur basketball world had to offer. But he'd always come back home. In this powerful and intimate memoir, readers follow Perkins on his journey from small-town Texas athlete to the NBA. Both on and off the court, Perk gained a reputation for his candor and conviction--his unabiding sense of right and wrong. Now he tells all, offering the sports insights for which he has become a stellar ESPN commentator, and for the first time ever, sharing frank opinions about racial justice, political consciousness, and fatherhood. Years spent playing against and alongside giants like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James helped shape Perk's athleticism, but this is a story all his own, the story of an education"-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9781250280343 (hardcover)
  • Physical Description: 292 pages ; 25 cm
  • Edition: First edition.
  • Publisher: New York : St. Martin's Press, 2023.

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:
The pear orchard -- Perk's guide to NBA survival -- Big man -- The run -- Fatherhood -- Empty center -- Protest -- Young guns -- The age of LeBron -- Twilight, purgatory, dawn -- Just a country boy from the 409 : the making of a media career.
Subject: Perkins, Kendrick, 1984-
African American athletes > Political activity.
African American basketball players > Biography.
Basketball players > United States > Biography.
Genre: Biographies.
Autobiographies.

Available copies

  • 1 of 1 copy available at Tsuga Consortium.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show All Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Lakeshore Branch 796.323092 Perki 31681010311926 NONFIC Available -

  • Baker & Taylor
    "The Education of Kendrick Perkins is an intimate memoir about race, fatherhood, and basketball, from former NBA player and outspoken cultural critic, Kendrick "Perk" Perkins. At age eighteen, Kendrick Perkins left his grandparents' run-down yellow housein Beaumont, Texas for the last time. Sure, he'd traveled the country for camps and tournaments. He'd banged and bruised with the biggest and most skilled players the amateur basketball world had to offer. But he'd always come back home. In this powerfuland intimate memoir, readers follow Perkins on his journey from small-town Texas athlete to the NBA. Both on and off the court, Perk gained a reputation for his candor and conviction--his unabiding sense of right and wrong. Now he tells all, offering thesports insights for which he has become a stellar ESPN commentator, and for the first time ever, sharing frank opinions about racial justice, political consciousness, and fatherhood. Years spent playing against and alongside giants like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James helped shape Perk's athleticism, but this is a story all his own, the story of an education"--
  • Baker & Taylor
    The former NBA player and outspoken cultural critic shares his journey from his childhood in a small Texas town to the NBA, as well as offers sports insights and frank opinions about racial justice, political consciousness and fatherhood.
  • McMillan Palgrave

    "Kendrick Perkins is the bold and educational voice we need today. Every single word he speaks will challenge, enlighten and encourage you to become a better version of yourself and see a better version of the world. Perkins' riveting stories about the NBA, his upbringing and social justice will make this book impossible to put down." -- Emmanuel Acho, New York Times bestselling author of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

    Kendrick “Perk” Perkins is known for his blunt, opinionated, “carry the hell on” commentary on ESPN’s most popular shows. As a fourteen year NBA player and starting center for the 2008 NBA champion Boston Celtics, Perk earned a reputation as an enforcer, a fierce defender, and a great teammate. Now, In The Education of Kendrick Perkins, he opens a different side of himself: a powerful and intimate memoir that goes beyond basketball to discuss the reality of being Black in America.

    Abandoned by his father, then orphaned after the murder of his mother, Perk was raised by his grandparents in a small Texas town. He left their home at age eighteen, drafted out of high school by the legendary Celtics. For a country boy, Boston was a completely new world, and the NBA a league of legends: Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Kevin Garnett, James Harden, Shaquille O’Neal, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Kevin Durant, and more. Perk had to learn how to play with and against these stars, while adjusting to life on the road as a professional athlete.

    But his education went beyond basketball. In this book, Perk reveals his awakening consciousness of larger issues that affected him, his fellow players, and Black Americans:
    -How many NBA players grow up in broken families and difficult circumstances
    -The history of slavery and how that trauma affects generations of Black life
    -The truths told by writers including James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and others
    -The false myths about the Black family and fatherhood
    -Why George Floyd’s murder forced a reckoning about race in America

    Honest, fearless, dramatic, filled with stories about life on and off the court, The Education of Kendrick Perkins is a unique memoir that shows how he and we all can “carry the hell on.”


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