The Race to be Myself - Caster Semenya

Written By Mona Angéline

Caster tells the harrowing story of the discrimination she went through as a world-class 800m runner and Olympic gold medalist. To some members of the athletic community, she appeared male, which resulted in undisclosed, unannounced, and incredibly invasive gender verification exams while she was still a teenager. Caster's higher testosterone levels then led to a horrific time period, in which she was forced to take hormones to lower her testosterone in order to be allowed to compete.

I couldn't sing the praises of Caster's memoir higher, especially as a runner and LGBTQIA disciple. Her story is an important one, not only for the above reasons but also because runners with her cultural background are so much more vulnerable to discrimination by this white and Western sport.

According to the book, Caster is fighting for the rights of other athletes in similar situations on the basis of human rights violations. Go Caster!!

Five stars from me for this important work on women in sports.

Mona Angéline

Mona Angéline is an unapologetically vulnerable writer, reader, book reviewer, artist, athlete, and scientist. She honors the creatively unconventional, the authentically "other". She shares her emotions because the world tends to hide theirs. She is a new writer, but her work was recently accepted in Flash Fiction Magazine, Grand Dame Literary, tiny wren lit, Down in the Dirt Magazine, The Viridian Door, The Machine, Whisky Blot Magazine, and The Academy of Mind and Heart. She loves to review books and has written them for the /tƐmz/ Review, the Ampersand Review, and the Beakful Litblog. Sooner or later she will have to condense this list… Mona is also a regular guest editor for scientific journals although she doesn't use a pen name when her engineering PhD degree is involved. She lives bicoastally in Santa Cruz, California, and in New York and savors life despite, or maybe because of, her significant struggles with chronic illness and mild disability. Learn about her musings at creativerunnings.com. Follow her on Instagram under @creativerunnings and on Twitter at @creativerunning.

https://creativerunnings.com
Previous

The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson