When I Was the Greatest

Ali is the novel’s the first-person narrator and protagonist. He loves boxing and his family and is a staunchly loyal friend. Ali is an affectionate person, a trait he learned from emulating his father’s displays toward him and his sister. He easily expresses emotions that men, particularly Black men, often struggle with because for him, such emotional expression is a “normal thing” (180).

While Ali is the central figure connecting all the novel’s characters and events, he does not make himself the story’s central focus. His characterization is one of the ways this is represented. Unlike the other characters, who are introduced with detailed descriptions, Ali says little about his physical characteristics, but a few details can be gleaned from passing remarks. For example, his own age, “fifteen going on sixteen” (66), only comes up when talking about Needles being a year older than him and Noodles. He talks about getting his nickname in an aside to the story of how Noodles came by his moniker, which he says is “better than mine” (15). A description of one of Ali’s physical attributes comes almost a quarter way through the story, when he describes his sparring partner Matt as “built like a streetlamp, just like me” (55).