Seeing Serena
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A riveting, revealing portrait of tennis champion and global icon Serena Williams that combines biography, cultural criticism, and sports writing to offer “a deep, satisfying meditation” (The New York Times) on the most consequential athlete of her time.
There has never been an athlete like Serena Williams. She has dominated women’s tennis for two decades, changed the way the game is played, and—by inspiring Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff, and others—changed, too, the racial makeup of the pro game. But Williams’s influence has not been confined to the tennis court. As a powerful Black woman who struggled to achieve and sustain success, she has emerged as a cultural icon, figuring in conversations about body image, working mothers, and more.
Seeing Serena chronicles Williams’s return to tennis after giving birth to her daughter—from her controversial 2018 US Open final against Naomi Osaka through a 2020 season that unfolded against a backdrop of a pandemic and protests over the killing of Black men and women by the police. Gerald Marzorati, who writes about tennis for The New Yorker, travels to Wimbledon and to Compton, California, where Serena and her sister Venus learned to play. He talks with former women’s tennis greats, sports and cultural commentators—and Serena herself. He observes Williams from courtside, on the red carpet, in fashion magazines, on social media. He sees her and writes about her prismatically—reflecting on her many, many facets.
The result is an “enlightening…keen analysis” (The Washington Post) and energetic narrative that illuminates Serena’s singular status as the greatest women’s tennis player of all time and a Black woman with a global presence like no other.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Marzorati (Late to the Ball) delivers a serviceable book that follows tennis star Serena Williams throughout the 2019 tennis season in her unsuccessful attempt at a 24th Grand Slam title. Marzorati had no special access to Williams or to those closest to her, and his collage-like book, while well written, offers little new about Williams. He does, however, enthusiastically break down each game Williams played in 2019 and peppers in information about her personal life, covering her humble roots in Compton, Calif.; her marriage to Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian; and the birth of their daughter, Olympia, in 2017. Williams's 2019 season was marked by injuries and losses, including a crusher at the U.S. Open that dashed her hopes of tying the record for most Grand Slam wins by a female player. The book features an interview with tennis legend Chris Evert, who discusses Williams's impact on the sport, and, in noting Williams's development of clothing and jewelry lines, highlights her savvy as a businesswoman. Win or lose, Marzorati writes, Williams remains a paragon: "Serena would not, could not, be extinguished." This is a solidly reported book, but Marzorati doesn't do quite enough to show what makes his subject tick.
