Binnie Klein's Blows to the Head continues to garner positive reviews and attention. Here's a sampling from the latest review, from The Jewish Chronicle:Klein offers a light-hearted, self-deprecating, and entertaining romp through her unusual experiences as a boxer, using them to connect with her current activities, her past, and her Jewish identification.
I was quite the unlikely contender – quite sedentary – and certainly did not come from a background of athleticism, growing up in Newark, New Jersey in the 1950s. One day, while training with my coach John Spehar, a former middleweight state champion, and quite a history buff, I asked: “John, were there ever any Jewish boxers?” I was amazed and fascinated to hear about the 26 champions between 1910 and 1940. For reasons I could not fathom at the time, the existence of these Jewish athletes was very important to me, and led me to research their lives and their achievements.Read the full interview and keep up with Binnie at her website.
Klein has mixed feelings about the boomer lit category. She says any time a genre is created, there’s a tendency to assign it a connotation or quality that doesn’t accurately describe it. On the other hand, boomer lit is an interesting marketing tool about the power of change and reinvention that she finds interesting. “Good books are good books whether you call them a catchy genre or not.”Read the rest of Binnie's interview and the full article here. Do you read boomer lit? If so, what attracts you to the genre? And what are some of your favorites?
Our boxing week continues. Today we have a review of Binnie Klein's book to share, courtesy of Joseph Roche at The Examiner. Here's an excerpt:Read the full review and visit Binnie's website for more on Blows to the Head.The most interesting parts of Klein’s book are the little things about the Jewish experience that are shared across generations. The stories of Jewish fighters changing their names so that their mother’s wouldn’t find out that they were boxing (to Jewish mother’s boxing was a shanda), or stories of Klein’s family and her upbringing – the father who for much of the story she seems in a mixture of fear and reverence of winds up at the end being somewhat redeemed with the simple acknowledgement that he always kept driving to the “motel with the pool.”
Binnie Klein, author of Blows to the Head: How Boxing Changed My Mind, was recently interviewed by Ken Best on WPKN. Fittingly, the interview begins with Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"! The New Haven Register also ran a feature story on Binnie, which you can read here. Be sure to check out Binnie's website as well, which is chock-full of all things related to the book and her boxing experiences.
Binnie Klein is many things: a psychotherapist, a lecturer at Yale University's Department of Psychiatry, and even the host of a popular weekly music and interview program on WPKN radio. She's also an avid boxer. One of these things does not fit with the others, right? Binnie took up boxing in her mid-fifties, and the sport has helped her undergo a fascinating midlife transformation. She's written a new book on her love affair with boxing, called Blows to the Head: How Boxing Changed My Mind. The Jewish Ledger recently interviewed Binnie about the book, boxing, and how the ring has helped her explore both her roots and a surprising chapter of the Jewish immigrant experience. You can read the full interview here.
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