Why We Kneel, How We Rise is the title of the newest book by Michael Holding, the great fast bowler of the golden years of West Indies cricket in the 1980s and 1990s. The book appeared earlier this year and is published in the UK by a leading publishing house, Simon & Schuster. It is guaranteed to be read by any thinking person in the world who is sensitive to current affairs, especially sports enthusiasts and those who understand that we must continue to deal with the global fallout from the George Floyd murder and the coming of #BlackLivesMatter.
Michael Holding on his own is worth reading for his clarity of vision, great facility with the English language, his enviable capacity to articulate the finer points of the beautiful game of cricket, his courage to tell it how it is and his independence of mind.
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In this new book, though, he adds more star value by including contributions from the intriguingly iconoclastic Naomi Osaka of tennis, Thierry Henry of the unforgettable days of Arsenal’s domination of the football pitch and beyond, the untouchable, lightning sprinter Usain Bolt, Aboriginal footballing icon Adam Goodes, double 1996 Olympic gold medallist Michael Johnson, the first hijab-wearing Olympian, Ibtihaj Muhammad, legendary cricketing South African fast bowler Makhaya Ntini, and Hope Powell, the first black coach of an English national sporting team when she became England women’s football manager in 1998. Together they weave a compelling account of what it is like to be great but also a victim of racial derision and its effect. It’s a story of our societies and our world.
Holding, a bold man, hardly given to bursting into tears, was completely overcome by grief and powerful emotion at the George Floyd killing. It gave rise to this new title, which has been a Sunday Times bestseller. He had never said anything about the racism he had endured throughout his career – most victims put up and shut up – but he could not restrain himself when one day in September 2020 the rain delayed play and cricket talk between on-air commentators became race talk, live on Sky Sports television. It was a few weeks after the video recording of George Floyd begging for his life as a white policeman snuffed it out of him by unrelentingly pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck.
Asked to comment further by Sky News, Holding, a man who enjoyed near-worldwide trust and respect for his integrity, let rip on the scourge that is racism for those who are its victims. Holding’s surprising utterances went viral and added succour to the fast-growing movement against a reality that many unconscious perpetrators reject. It led to the scales falling from the eyes of many who had never really engaged with the subject, believing racism to be somebody else’s problem, or something black people should “get over.”
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I recommend this book for a condensed and precise hist
