Get ready to read: our current fave all-star soccer queen Megan Rapinoe is writing two books that will focus on her athletic career and her activism. Publisher Penguin Press announced that Rapinoe will publish the so-far untitled projects in fall of 2020, with one book being geared towards adults and one book designed for middle-grade readers.
Penguin said that the adult book will be “a perfect vehicle for a honest, thoughtful, unapologetic, idealistic discussion of women, social justice, role models, gay issues, nationalism, and even a little soccer.” The middle-grade book will focus on “social justice and change and the power young people have within their own communities and the world at large.”
If we’ve learned anything about Rapnioe this year, we can expect the books to both be full of passion, honesty, and hopefully some more details about those after-game parties we all glimpsed on Instagram following the U.S. Women National Team’s fourth World Cup win.
While the world cup has made Rapinoe a household name, her athletic career and activism both date back long before this summer. In 2016, Rapinoe started to kneel during the national anthem in support of Colin Kaepernick and in protest of racism in the United States. She also has been outspoken about her sexuality, and this year became the first openly queer woman to pose for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
And of course, Rapinoe has in many ways been the face of the very public equal pay lawsuit currently rocking the soccer world. She is one of 28 players who sued the league for gender discrimination in a suit currently making its way through the courts and which could pave the way for the USWNT — which objectively outperforms the men’s team — to make equal pay.
“I just feel it’s so much more than soccer at this point,” Rapinoe told NBC News about her activism. “We’ve mobilized the soccer fans and the sort of casual fan now, people are watching it because they think that we’re changing the world. And they’re inspired by us on the field to do what we’re doing off the field in their own lives.”
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