Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781953387455)

Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity is a vital and deeply personal testament to self, family, community, culture, and sport.

Award-winning writer Ellen van Neerven plays soccer from a young age, learning early on that while sport can lead to exhilarating experiences and community-building, it can also be a painful and exclusive world. The more they play, the more they realize about sport's troubled relationship with race, gender, and sexuality--and question what it means to play sport on stolen, sovereign land, especially in the midst of multiple environmental crises.

Formidable, poetic, and impassioned, Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity is improbably many things at once, simultaneously a rumination on sport, relationship to land, Indigenous rights, trans inclusion, and race. Van Neerven weaves broad cultural touchstones, such as Zinedine Zidane's red card in the 2006 World Cup finals, with quiet moments playing soccer with their family, biking to and from practice, detailing a competitive and amorous relationship with a teammate, and simply enthralled by observing the landscape.

Fierce, original, and also abundantly tender, Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity is a ground-breaking book that demonstrates van Neerven's unrivalled talent and courage.

Author: Ellen Van Neerven
ISBN-10: 1953387454
ISBN-13: 9781953387455
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Language: English
Published: 04/09/2024
Pages: 360
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 5.59h x 7.40w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 10/21/2024