This collection of original poems features work created and edited over two years in the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. The poems collected for this thesis represent a Bildungsroman, a coming of age narrative, that details the psychological growth and education of a narrator who feels excluded or invisible as he grows up in America during the late eighties and early nineties. Progressing poem by poem, a myriad of subjects are explored including race, gender, religion, economics, the environment, politics, and even Muhammad Ali.

While the intersection of sport and the Civil Rights era has been well documented from a number of angles and approaches, perhaps no athlete has been so thoroughly connected to this period in history as Muhammad Ali. His stances on Vietnam, race relations and religion during this period have provided a fountain of historical research and narratives on this very turbulent period. However, what about the political and social activities of Ali’s contemporaries? Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman were not just heavyweight champions, but also individuals who were profoundly affected by the mass exodus of Blacks out of the South and into the cities of the North and West. Known to history as the Great Migration, this movement not only affected these men physically, but also helped to shape their ideas and understandings about racial identity, civil rights and race relations in their adult lives. The purpose of this research is to examine the political and social activities and experiences throughout the lives of Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman. In addition to exploring the narratives surrounding their migration experiences, it will display the differences in opinion each man had regarding issues such as segregation and how they defined themselves against Ali’s largely ignored, hardline segregationist stance. Finally, it will explore the possibilities for reexamining not just the popularly accepted narratives of these four men, but also of Ali himself.

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