They used to play basketball growing up. But once they got home, they would sit on the couch and watch boxing matches on television with their “nonno”, grandpa. “I have warm memories of those afternoons in Italy”, recalls Hill Donnell (they/them), “I was very young, but I remember thinking that it was such a cool sport. And many more years later, when I showed up in that hot, sweaty gym basement in Bed-Stuy, New York, my mind went back to that.”
Hill began boxing in New Orleans in 2017. “The beauty of sport is that it has rules and parameters within which you can play, ensuring its fairness.” However, this contrasts sharply with a binary reality where public spaces, including boxing gyms, are strictly gendered.
