The Keeper
Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women's Lives
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times Book Review,
"[R]eaders will certainly want to linger on the beautiful depictions of birds, people and scenes from her life. She weaves in historical context in graceful and necessary ways."
A beautifully illustrated coming-of-age graphic memoir chronicling how sports shaped one young girl’s life and changed women’s history forever.
Growing up playing on a top national soccer team in the 1980s, Kelcey Ervick and her teammates didn’t understand the change they represented. Title IX was enacted in 1972 with little fanfare, but to seismic effect; between then and now, girls’ participation in organized sports has exploded more than 1,000 percent. Braiding together personal narrative, pop culture, literature, and history, Ervick tells the story of how her adolescence was shaped by this boom. Ervick also explores her role as a goalkeeper—a position marked by outsider status and observation—and reveals it has drawn some of the most famed writers of our time. With wit and poignant storytelling, The Keeper brings to life forgotten figures who understood the importance of athletics to help women step into their confidence and power—and push for equality. Full of 1980s nostalgia and heart, The Keeper is a celebration of how far we have come and a reminder of how far we have to go.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ervick (The Bitter Life of Bozena Nemcova) volleys an ebullient celebration of girls' soccer that blends personal memoir and sports history into a work of disarming emotional power. In the 1980s as a goalkeeper for her youth team, Ervic makes it to nationals and develops a lifelong passion. "On the soccer field we were free to be tough, be aggressive, and be powerful," she writes, recalling her coming-of-age soccer days as a kaleidoscope of camaraderie, competition, road trips, and friendships. She also notes unequal treatment and sexist questions from reporters. In the present, Ervick's made the transition from soccer player to soccer mom, and unpacks the context of being in that first generation of American girls to grow up under Title IX, back through the history of women's sports and early "lady footballers." Her loose, colorful artwork, open page layouts, and lighthearted use of collage elements—vintage photos, clippings from her teenage diaries—create a casual style that belies the book's fierce intelligence. Like the best sports books, it's really about life: she gets into feminism, freedom, art, women's bodies, and the loneliness of the goalkeeper (she quotes from fellow keepers Camus and Nabokov). The result's a winning argument for women's sports as a gateway to freedom and self-determination.
Customer Reviews
Captivating
Kelsey is earnest and awesome really showing something beautiful.