Heavyweight Audiobook By Jordana Moore Saggese cover art

Heavyweight

Black Boxers and the Fight for Representation

Preview
Get this deal Try for $0.00
Offer ends April 30, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Heavyweight

By: Jordana Moore Saggese
Narrated by: L. Malaika Cooper
Get this deal Try for $0.00

$14.95/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends April 30, 2025 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $13.99

Buy for $13.99

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

In Heavyweight, Jordana Moore Saggese examines images of Black heavyweight boxers to map the visual terrain of racist ideology in the United States, paying particular attention to the intersecting discourses of Blackness, masculinity, and sport. Looking closely at the "shadow archive" of portrayals across fine art, vernacular imagery, and public media at the turn of the twentieth century, she demonstrates how the images of boxers reveal the racist stereotypes implicit in them, many of which continue to structure ideas of Black men today.

With a focus on both anonymous fighters and notorious champions, including Jack Johnson, Saggese contends that popular images of these men provided white spectators a way to render themselves experts on Blackness and Black masculinity. These images became the blueprint for white conceptions of the Black male body—existing between fear and fantasy, simultaneously an object of desire and an instrument of violence.

Reframing boxing as yet another way whiteness establishes the violent mythology of its supremacy, Saggese highlights the role of imagery in normalizing a culture of anti-Blackness.

©2024 Duke University Press (P)2025 Highbridge Audio
Americas Black & African American Combat Sports & Self-Defense Sports History United States Combat Sports

What listeners say about Heavyweight

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.