The Education of Kendrick Perkins
Description
The Education of Kendrick Perkins is an intimate memoir about race, fatherhood, and basketball, from former NBA player and outspoken cultural critic, Kendrick “Perk” Perkins.
At age eighteen, Kendrick Perkins left his grandparents’ run-down yellow house in Beaumont, Texas for the last time. Sure, he’d traveled the country for camps and tournaments. He’d banged and bruised with the biggest and most skilled players the amateur basketball world had to offer. But he’d always come back home. In this powerful and intimate memoir, readers follow Perkins on his journey from small-town Texas athlete to the NBA.
Both on and off the court, Perk gained a reputation for his candor and conviction–his unabiding sense of right and wrong. Now he tells all, offering the sports insights for which he has become a stellar ESPN commentator, and for the first time ever, sharing frank opinions about racial justice, political consciousness, and fatherhood. Years spent playing against and alongside giants like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James helped shape Perk’s athleticism, but this is a story all his own, the story of an education.
St. Martin’s Press
304pp.
Publication Date: February 21, 2023
Available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop, BAM!
Book’s Website: educationofkendrickperkins.com
Visit the book’s page on Goodreads
Blurbs
Kendrick Perkins became a world champion as a professional basketball player because of his crushing defense and his relentless pursuit of excellence. Now, as a renowned ESPN figure who brings thrilling new meaning to the term color commentator, and in this bracing and brilliant memoir, Perkins displays a gift for blunt truth and unsparing analysis that matches his dominance on the court. Whether addressing his rise to prominence from humble roots, or the racial crises that plague our national landscape, The Education of Kendrick Perkins offers acute insight in his trademark folksy manner that translates abstract moral principles into compelling common sense. This book is a refreshing departure from the politically correct reflections of most sports stars to reveal the heart and passions of a beautiful and honest man.
—Michael Eric Dyson, Vanderbilt professor and author of Entertaining Race
Kendrick Perkins is the bold and educational voice we need today. Every single word he speaks will challenge, enlighten and encourage you to become a better version of yourself and see a better version of the world. Perkins’ riveting stories about the NBA, his upbringing and social justice will make this book impossible to put down.
—Emmanuel Acho, New York Times bestselling author of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man
It makes sense that the most exciting, authentic and knowledgeable basketball analyst in the world would create a stunning, revealing memoir. But I was still shocked at the wonder of this memoir. After reading The Education of Kendrick Perkins, you will understand why none of us should ever doubt the mind, nor the gumption of Kendrick Perkins ever again. It’s hard to make a layered classic memoir and that’s exactly what Kendrick Perkins has done. Though the book moves from region to region, Kendrick carries his south with him, and consistently interrogates himself, and the NBA. The book is flat out brilliant. Now carry the hell on.
—Kiese Laymon, MacArthur award-winning author of Heavy
From Beaumont to Boston and beyond, The Education of Kendrick Perkins takes the reader on a journey through Black history and Black social thought to give a unique perspective of what it is like for a Black man to make it in the NBA.
—Louis Moore, author of We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality
The Education of Kendrick Perkins makes clear our own miseducation. On the hardwood, Big Perk did what great Big Men do, he cleaned the glass. But in these pages, he does what great point guards do, he drops dimes, dishing highlight reel insights into the Black experience on and off the court. He leads us to truths too often obscured by racism. Truths about Jim Crow and the Great Migration; about training camp and game sevens; about fatherhood and fatherless sons; about teams and players we love and love to hate; about Black Power and Black Lives Matter; about the era of Jordan and the Age of Lebron. This is the book you need to carry on!
—Hasan Kwame Jeffries, author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt and host of the podcast Teaching Hard History
The Education of Kendrick Perkins is a stone-cold miracle, one of those rare books that manages to combine an enthralling, insider’s account of life in the modern NBA with a daring exploration of what it means to be raised poor and black in America. Big Perk brings us onto the court and inside the locker room. But he also traces his story back to the roots of the African American experience, capturing the ancestral struggle to persevere amid slavery, migration, and a racism so entrenched that it infiltrates even the most gilded realms of athletic stardom. A thrilling ride and an astonishing achievement.
—Steve Almond, author of Against Football and All the Secrets of the World
The Education of Kendrick Perkins is much more than a memoir. It is an American history lesson told through the life experience of a country boy from Beaumont, Texas who made it to the NBA. A bold, insightful and provocative story―with its triumphs and defeats―that offers lessons for how to live fully and how not to lose your way. Authenticity jumps from every page!
—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University
Reviews / Media
Publishers Weekly Interview with Kendrick Perkins
K[no]w Mercy Podcast (Stephen A. Smith) with Kendrick Perkins
The Lowe Post Podcast (Zach Lowe) with Kendrick Perkins
The Nation: Edge of Sports Podcast (Dave Zirin) with Kendrick Perkins
The Dan Patrick Show with Kendrick Perkins