Chess for Success: Using an Old Game to Build New Strengths in Children and Teens - Softcover

Ashley, Maurice Gordon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0767915682 ISBN 13: 9780767915687

Verlag: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Maurice Ashley immigrated to New York from Jamaica at the age of twelve, only to be confronted with the harsh realities of urban life. But he found his inspiration for a better life after stumbling upon a chess book and becoming hypnotized by the game. He would eventually break the chess world's color lines by becoming an International Grandmaster in 1999.

Ashley realized that chess strategies could be used as an educational tool to help children avoid the pitfalls often associated with growing up. In this book, he serves up compelling anecdotes about how chess has positively affected young players. He also offers tips on technique, how to make the game fun for children of all ages and levels, and how to overcome the myth that chess isn't cool. Through his guidance, readers will understand how chess strategies can improve a child's mental agility, creativity, and problem-solving skills. Chess for Success is a much-anticipated resource for parents, teachers, counselors, youth workers, and chess lovers.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MAURICE ASHLEY was named 2003 Grandmaster of the Year by the U.S. Chess Federation. He has been profiled by such publications as the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and USA Weekend. He lives with his family in Queens, New York.

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Maurice Ashley immigrated to New York from Jamaica at the age of twelve, only to be confronted with the harsh realities of urban life. But he found his inspiration for a better life after stumbling upon a chess book and becoming hypnotized by the game's philosophies; his dedication would eventually lead him to break the chess world's color lines by becoming an International Grandmaster in 1999.
During his ascent to chess's pinnacle, Ashley realized that chess strategies could be used as an educational tool to help children avoid the pitfalls often associated with growing up. In this book, he serves up compelling anecdotes about how chess has positively affected young players. He also offers tips on technique, how to make the game fun for children of all ages and levels, and how to overcome the myth that chess isn't cool. Through his guidance and references to various developmental theories, readers will understand how chess strategies can improve a child's mental agility, creativity, and problem-solving skills.
"Chess for Success is a much-anticipated resource for parents, teachers, counselors, youth workers, and chess lovers.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The secret to success, happiness, achieving your desires, all of the things that we as humans do and aspire to be, comes down to one concept: the ability to accurately assess your position. Everything you do in life is a move and there will be a response. This is a concept that has been bubbling in my mind and it comes alive for me on the chessboard.

--WILL SMITH, ACTOR


DISCOVERY

I remember the afternoon I first fell in love with chess. I was in the library at Brooklyn Technical High School working on a class project during study-time. Scanning the shelves for some reference material, I noticed a dusty black book with the word chess in faded block letters. Curious, I pulled the book down, brushed it off, and opened it. The yellowed pages were filled with multiple diagrams of what I took to be chess setups. Bizarre symbols that seemed like some secret spy code appeared on every page. The accompanying explanations used words that sounded like the language of war, where terms like "maneuver" and "redeployment" seemed to be describing important battle plans. Puzzled and secretly excited by this mysterious discovery, I checked the book out at the front desk. That simple act would seal my fate as an addict of an ancient game that has captivated millions of minds--kings and queens, scientists and philosophers, athletes and actors, grandparents and little kids--for over fourteen hundred years. And it would bring meaning and direction to the disorder that had been my young life.

SACRIFICE

My first experience with the chess concept of sacrifice--giving up something of value in order to attain something more valuable in return--occurred when I was two years old. In 1968, my mother, a single parent desperate for her kids to escape a life of poverty, decided to take advantage of a new U.S. immigration policy that was opening doors to people from all over the Caribbean. Entrusting my brother Devon, sister Alicia, and me to the care of our grandmother (my dad was living in the United States), she traveled to New York City with the hope of finding decent employment. Initially she worked as a live-in nanny taking care of the kids of a well-to-do family on Long Island. Eventually, she moved on to other low-wage positions before finally landing an office job doing clerical work. When she had finally saved up enough money and had secured our visas, she sent for us. The entire process would take ten years.

I took the separation hard. While I made friends easily, not having my mom or dad around left a hole. Our grandmother, Irma Cormack, who we called Mama, filled the gap as best she could. A stern woman who had once been a schoolteacher, she made sure our basic needs were met. Her late-night stories of duppies (ghosts) and obeah men (voodoo priests) kept us both terrified and entertained, her voice crackling with the passion and intensity of someone who had seen such things up close.

From time to time, she would treat us to hot roasted peanuts from the peanut man when he came rolling by with his cart. Having already parented and raised seven children, she was big on discipline and did not hesitate to give us the occasional whipping when we got out of hand. I seemed to bear the brunt of most of the beatings for things like sneaking out of the yard to go see what Devon, older by eight years, was doing with his friends, or for drawing on every single page of a notebook that my mother had sent earlier in the summer for school. Being a sensitive child, I hated being hit for what seemed like normal boyish behavior; many of my tears came from feeling as if my mom might have treated me differently. Though I loved my grandmother, I often fantasized about getting away from Jamaica and living a whole new life.

That day came like a dream.

In 1978, our papers finally went through. On a beautiful sunny day in August, my siblings and I boarded a plane with a few packed belongings and headed for New York. I could not have been more excited. I had spent the past year in a state of near depression, feeling ever more alone and confused. There was very little to satisfy my inquisitive mind and I would read the same comic book nine or ten times to divert myself. Once again, a birthday had passed without toys or books, and I had given up hope that I would one day own a bike. When I had finished third in my class at the prestigious Wolmer's Boys High School,* Mama, noticing my despondency and having nothing to offer in celebration of my achievement, hugged me proudly and stressed the importance of doing one's best for its own sake. I believed her, internalizing that lesson to this day, but I couldn't help but wonder what else life had to offer.

Looking back from the runway, I could see she was beaming with joy and anticipation at the possibilities that life was about to offer the three of us. Her ten years of love, dedication, and hard work were coming to an end; the goal had been reached. On that day, as the plane banked over the mountainside near Kingston and soared north by northwest to the U.S. coastline, I shared her happiness and hopefulness. I did not realize that it was the last time I would see her alive.

LATERAL MOVE

The reunion at John F. Kennedy Airport was exciting and confusing. I had seen my mother four or five times when she had visited home on vacation, but those brief meetings had basically left us strangers. She looked like a younger version of Mama, with the same light skin and straight hair that made her almost close to passing for white. Her eyes mirrored the excitement in Mama's eyes; the decade-long journey for their progeny had been inextricably intertwined. Still, my mother's challenge had been different. Her sacrifice had been one of intimacy, ten years without the subtle joys of watching her children blossom, of missed kisses and hugs, of lost laughter and soft tears, and of not being able to provide the love and security only a mother can give. It would take me a long time, and only after I had my own children, to begin to appreciate the full depth of her loss. Those years had essentially vanished, never to be recaptured. She had given up knowing us, and us knowing her, to secure our futures in the great land of opportunity.

From all the stories I'd heard, living in America was going to be like one big party. The programs on television showed beautiful people with nice clothes, big houses, and fancy cars. Rumor had it that there was a street paved with gold. Before we had left, I had made a twenty-dollar bet with Devon that we would live in a skyscraper with a pool on the roof. He laughed, looked at me to see if I was serious, and then tried to talk me out of it. I insisted. Finally, he shook his head and took the bet.

As we left the airport and drove down Linden Boulevard in Brooklyn, my eyes darted back and forth like a hummingbird. Eager to see mansions and rolling gardens, I was confused by the sights: garbage on the streets, shops smeared with graffiti, gaping potholes in the roads. Abandoned buildings with smashed windows resembling a skull's empty eye sockets seemed to haunt every other corner. I was trying to wrap my mind around this twisted version of America when the car slowed to a stop in front of an old two-story tenement. Devon would later remark that it reminded him of a jailhouse.

As we exited the car, some kids stared at us as though we were naked Aborigines visiting the city for the first time. An ambulance, siren blaring, raced by. Confused by the surreal scene, I asked my mom, "A who we a visit?"

Her answer was sharp and abrupt, her still-thick Jamaican patois sizzling from my unintended insult. "Wha' yu mean? Dis is your home!"

We walked up to the second floor and entered a cramped space that would be the first apartment I had ever set foot in. It had all the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0767915682
• ISBN 13: 9780767915687
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland