Amateur

March 15, 2018

Author of the award-winning and multi-best-booked memoir Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man, McBee is the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden. Here he recounts training for that event while pondering the complicated relationship between masculinity and violence.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 18, 2018
In November 2015, McBee (Man Alive) became the first transgender man to fight a boxing match in Madison Square Garden, and this powerful book chronicles his training and his attempts at understanding why violence is accepted as an aspect of American masculinity. The book unfolds as a series of connected essays that explore masculinity in America, each spun from McBee’s experience training at boxing gyms around Manhattan in the five months leading up to the match. There are glimpses into the early stages of his transition, and a motif about being afraid of men all his life—including as a man, a fear he puts to rest by learning to box. McBee also writes about his current life as a man (“I was still adjusting to... the ease with which my ideas were often executed, the ways my expertise was assumed before I’d proven it”) and his own definition of manhood that allows men to be vulnerable, tender, and unafraid of failure, help, shame, or pain. McBee’s lyrical, achingly honest exploration of loss and maturation offers a hopeful antidote to more toxic forms of masculinity.

July 1, 2018
A journalist's account of why he decided to train as a boxer and become the first transgender man to fight a cisgender man in Madison Square Garden.McBee (Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man, 2014) began his transition to manhood at age 30. Although he loved the new coherence between his inner and outer selves, he was also aware that becoming a man also meant becoming an heir to toxic masculinity. He searched for "good men" to imitate until the day his girlfriend suggested that his real task was "to face [his] worst fears about who [he was]" rather than seeking outside role models. With her words in mind, he decided to take up boxing at a local New York gym to better understand the "brutal intimacies" of male relationships. He cleared his first inner hurdle by coming out to his trainers and earning their respect for his honesty. At the same time, the author also became "wary of [the] new...warrior-like ego" he saw emerge within himself. He then signed up to fight in a charity match at MSG, and he continued to work through his remaining fears about masculinity, many of which surfaced during sessions with a female boxer. She threatened him not only because she was a better fighter, but also because she forced him to grapple with his own internalized sexism and romanticized notions of manhood. Training with her eventually made him understand that he could actively rewrite inherited social scripts about masculinity. McBee also realized a core truth about men and boxing: Males seeking out other males to learn the art of fighting were not necessarily seeking blood or violence. Rather, they were looking for a bond by exposing vulnerabilities and learning to overcome their deficits within the protected space of the gym or boxing ring. In this lyrical, courageous book, the author eloquently probes his inner life as he searches for the meaning of gender identity in a world limited by binary thinking.Provocative and illuminating--a winning follow-up to McBee's acclaimed debut.

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