The next pick for the Tennis Abstract podcast book club will be Days of Grace, Arthur Ashe’s 1993 memoir.
I trust that readers are familiar with Ashe–if you’re not, now’s a good time to learn more about one of the most important figures in tennis history, the first Black superstar in the men’s game, and a three-time major winner. He wrote several books, and this one was the last, which he was editing until two days before his death at age 49.
Arthur himself should be recommendation enough to convince you that his memoir is worth reading, but if you want to scope it out a bit, here are the Los Angeles Times and New York Times reviews from 1993.
Carl and I are tentatively planning on talking about the book on the podcast in about a month, so if you’d like to read along with us and a deadline would help, let’s aim for April 14th.
I’ll leave comments open on this post, so if you have thoughts about the book you’d like to share, or topics you think we should put on the agenda for the podcast episode about the book, please leave them here.
Past book club selections / podcast episodes:
Great you are doing a segment on AA’s book Days of Grace. It’s a beautiful read. I published a short piece on Arthur Ashe based largely on this book in Another Chicago Review a couple years ago. I include my website link below to this piece. This is the version I later published with art from the influential hip-hop artist Justin Bua, who was kind enough to let me use his painting of Arthur Ashe. Hope you enjoy it. DL