There is a narrative we expect queer people to follow, and it usually involves a personal struggle with accepting the fact that they are gay. This is a common experience, but not one we often see represented in mainstream tellings of coming outs. When Rapinoe's narrator finally realizes she's gay, while playing soccer at University of Portland, she is relieved. This openness is one of book's biggest strengths - and it starts with the first pages, when Rapinoe drops an aside about how not realizing the magnitude of taking a knee was a bigger miscalculation than the years she spent as a kid thinking she had a future dating men. One thing the relationships do show us is Rapinoe's queerness. While it's understandable that Rapinoe may have wanted to respect the privacy of past partnerships by not sharing too many intimate details, the relationships feel like afterthoughts that don't actually serve to show us anything about Rapinoe as a narrator. Romantic relationships, aside from the relationship with her fiance Sue Bird, are blips in the book. There is a stark lack of scene detail in One Life, which can lead it's readers to feel that Rapinoe spends the length of the book keeping them at arm's length. Through 200-plus pages, we never really learn exactly who Megan Rapinoe is. It is the hyperfocus on this goal that takes away from some of the storytelling in the book. Instead, One Life is mostly a call to action - one that follows Rapinoe's own political awakening in the hopes that other people will follow in her footsteps and understand that they have an imperative to speak out about injustice in the world, like she has done. It also doesn't expound much on her relationship with her brother, Brian, who has had a lifelong struggle with opioid addiction.
And it won't dwell too much on her childhood in Redding, Calif. We understand from the opening pages that One Life is not mostly about Rapinoe's journey as a soccer player - though it is that. Her memoir, One Life, takes the reader through these events from the inside.
She was also the first member of the National Women's Soccer League to come out publicly as gay.Īs an athlete activist, she has gone toe-to-toe with the now-outgoing president and vocally rejected his presidency. And Rapinoe was the first white athlete to kneel in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick in his protest against police brutality and racial injustice. She declared that if the team won, they would not be going to the Trump White House.
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