How the city's marginalized communities have historically used sports as a tool for resilience and resistance To cities, sports have never been just entertainment. Progressive urbanites across the United States have used athletics to address persistent problems in city life: the fights for racial justice, workers' rights, equality for women and LGBTQ+ city dwellers, and environmental conservation. In Seattle, sports initiatives have powered meaningful reforms, such as popular stadium projects that promoted investments in public housing and mass transit. At the same time, conservative forces also used sports to consolidate their power and mobilize against the civic good. In Heartbreak City Shaun Scott takes the reader through 170 years of Seattle history, chronicling both well-known and long-forgotten events, like the establishment of racially segregated golf courses and neighborhoods in the regressive 1920s and the 1987 Seahawks players' strike that galvanized organized labor. At every step of the journey, he uncovers how sports have both united Seattle in pursuit of triumph and revealed its most profound political divides. Deep archival research and analysis combine in this people's history of a great American city's quest to become even greater--if only it could get out of its own way. Heartbreak City was made possible in part by a grant from 4Culture's Heritage Program. A Michael J. Repass Book
Shaun Scott is a Seattle writer, organizer, and filmmaker. His writing has appeared in local venues such as Crosscut and The Seattle Weekly and broader platforms such as The Guardian, Jacobin, and Sports Illustrated. His films include Seat of Empire, a documentary that covers a century and a half of Seattle history. He is author of Millennials and the Moments That Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-Present (Zero Books, 2018).
How the city's marginalized communities have historically used sports as a tool for resilience and resistance
"Shaun Scott's Heartbreak City unfolds like a baseball game. First through its structure: divided chronologically, recounting a people's history of Seattle into nine innings--and some extra bits--corresponding to key eras between the start of white settlement and today. Then through a vibrant array of characters shaping how history unfolds: divulging their shared hopes, committing errors, moving through losses, rallying. Heartbreak City is as much about casting a light on keystone, bygone sports dynasties . . . as it is about questioning Seattle's teams, champions, and projects the city rallies behind." -- "The Stranger" "Heartbreak City is a propulsive and provocative book that glides between the local and the national, the personal and the political, drawing from sport to achieve political insight and vice versa." -- "Sociology of Sport Journal" "Even as [Scott] reveals the manifold ways that sports express and sometimes amplify exploitation and inequality, the book is a testament to [the author's] love for and faith in sports as a means of bringing people together--of sports as a political project." -- "The Public Historian" "A history that twines the region's athletic triumphs and setbacks with its turbulent political trajectory and perpetual quest for a big-city pat on the head." -- "Seattle Met" "Using extensive archival research, Scott exhumes stories of Seattle both familiar and obscure to tell a tale of the Emerald City from beginning to end that, while not altogether flattering, does help to illuminate where the city came from and why we find ourselves in the position that we do today." -- "South Seattle Emerald"
