Customer Reviews

Whatever It Takes: Women on Women's Sport

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A wonderful anthology by women writing about their personal passions. Each piece stands by itself. The range of sports is wide--basketball, baseball, track, climbing, ice skating...each piece from a unique angle. I'm a woman and I love sports, but I was still surprised by the consistent high quality of the writing and by how much I enjoyed almost every piece.

An awesome collection of essays about women and sports by women who play sports. The writing spans the century, and it is both bracing and shocking to read those turn-of-the-century comments...and realize how far we still have to go. I defy you to read this without crying at least once, and yet, somewhere else, laughing so hard your subway partners get jumpy. You may never look at a woman playing sports--or your own body--the same way again. I intend to give this to my 69-year-old Pacers freak mother, my 36-year-old sports t.v.-producing sister--AND my niece, 6, who, every time she leaps into the water, asks, "Do you want to see my grand finale?" Sure I do...and you'll want to see each of these women's grand finales.

After reading this book, my first thought was of all the things that might have been, and weren't. There are no household names in this book; some, a few, are known to sports enthusiasts. But most of the stories are told by women whose names we don't know or remember. They write about the struggles and obstacles, about battles won and lost -- and always, about the passion that kept them coming back. What might have happened, I wondered, if these women had not had to fight so many battles just to be allowed to play? How far might they have gone if they hadn't had to carry those extra burdens?

The stories are sad, many of them, if only by implication. But the book is inspiring. To every athletic woman who ever felt alone or marginalized, who had to break the "gender line" to do what she loved, there is inspiration, and the knowledge that there are others like us. The sports represented are diverse, but the themes are common. Get this book for the woman athlete in your life -- or the woman athlete inside you.