The Gravity of Sarah Deming's Boxing Career

About a quarter of Brown University students are Jewish, up a few percent from thirty years ago. And while there have been quite a few Jewish winners of the New York Golden Gloves, only one graduated from Brown with a BA in comparative literature.

Sarah Deming worked as a yoga instructor, a chef, and a tutor when she decided to lace up the gloves for the first time. A classy boxer, who threw smart combinations, Deming wasn't afraid to mix it up and get her nose bloody. She won the New York Golden Gloves and the New York Empire Games as a featherweight just three years after taking up the sport. During the 1999 bantamweight finals at the Golden Gloves, Deming was still finding her style. Two years later, she showed dramatic improvement during her championship run.

Deming parlayed her successful amateur career into one as a writer. Her boxing experience informed her terrific 2019 novel Gravity, a story that oozes authenticity. Gravity Delgado has a Jewish mother and a Dominican father. A 16 year old amateur boxer, Gravity takes care of her eight year old brother, goes to school, and boxes at a world class level. She's forced to grow up quickly, because their dad left the family years ago and their mother is an abusive alcoholic.

Gravity trains at NY Cops and Kids in Flatbush, where Deming trained, although it was called Atlas Cops and Kids then. Gravity's coach is the crotchety old Jefferson Thomas, based on the late trainer and heavyweight George Washington. The Bocacrew is a rival stable at the gym and is based on the Sosacrew. One of Gravity's USA Boxing teammates is Sacred Jones, a nearly unbeatable middleweight like Claressa Shields.

Gravity and Sacred are members of the 2016 US Boxing team, who qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics. They are followed by my favorite character, Carmen Cruz, the blogger who has gained the respect of the fighters because she tells it like it is. Cruz travels all over the world covering the team, which is cause for extreme jealousy.

Gravity provides tremendous insight on the New York boxing scene and women's amateur boxing just when it was exploding in popularity. Teens will probably appreciate the romance scenes and the importance of social media more than us old fogies. But the boxing content and the complex relationships in the gym, told by someone who was there, can be appreciated by everyone.