Lori Dubbin’s graphic biography celebrates two singles tennis players who leapt over racial and religious barriers in the 1950s by becoming an international, award-winning doubles team. Dubbin’s well-chosen details, combined with Amanda Quartey’s expressive illustrations, make Perfect Match an upbeat story of interracial friendship and triumph.
Back in the fifties, tennis was all-white and racist. Growing up, Althea Gibson was only allowed to compete in the one league that was open to Black Americans. Every team in the United Kingdom rejected Angela Buxton because she was Jewish. Separately, persistence and excellence helped each to be chosen to represent their respective countries for the same tour of Asia in 1955, where they bonded after volleying against each other. Angela was still holding out for the perfect doubles partner with whom to enter the Wimbledon competition when they met again in France one year later. She asked Althea, who was lonely but had never considered playing doubles before, to become her partner right then. Althea accepted with delight. They had only two weeks to practice combining their strengths and getting out of each other’s way. Then, ignoring jeers from the French in the stands, Althea and Angela started winning. They kept on winning game after game, including Wimbledon the very next year.
The book ends there, but a fascinating afterword includes joyful photographs of the two women together, as well as additional details about how their friendship endured. Their teamwork ultimately opened doors for Althea, who continued on in the major leagues as a singles player after Angela injured her wrist.
Sharon Elswit, author of The Jewish Story Finder and a school librarian for forty years in NYC, now resides in San Francisco, where she shares tales aloud in a local JCC preschool and volunteers with 826 Valencia to help students write their own stories and poems.
