Moving, inspiring testimony by a woman facing hardship merely “because of a biological condition I was born with.”
A furiously proud memoir by “the most recognizable intersex person in the world.”
A two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-time world champion in the women’s 800 meters, professional runner Semenya, born in 1991 in a small village in the rural South African province of Limpopo, is better known for the media speculation on her gender and subsequent 2019 competition ban by the Association of Athletics Federation (now World Athletics) than for her immense talent and unparalleled success. Semenya was born with external female genitalia but also hyperandrogenism and undescended testicles. As a child, she mostly played with boys and was aware of looking “boyish,” but to her close-knit community, “it really was not a big fucking deal….There are many ways to be a girl.” At the age of 18, she was thrust onto the world stage when the IAAF forced her to take humiliating gender confirmation exams at the 2009 Berlin World Championships. Semenya’s impatience and anger at the bureaucracy and media circus are palpable, and she candidly discusses how she has a vagina, was raised as a girl, and is now inarguably a woman. It’s clear that philosophical debates about what makes a woman are beside the point to the author and that the worst part of becoming the focus of an international conversation is not the speculation, embarrassment, or attention from the paparazzi and other media; it’s the lost opportunity to run fast and win. Wherever readers stand on the question of intersex women in sports, they will certainly agree with her grim summary of her experience: “I would say I was being treated like an animal, but I grew up tending to my family’s livestock, and we treated them with more respect than that.”
Moving, inspiring testimony by a woman facing hardship merely “because of a biological condition I was born with.”Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781324035770
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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