Instructive episodes from the rise and reign of a hardwood heroine.
A shy kid speaks up on the court.
The uniquely decorated author—Staley is the only person to win college basketball’s august Naismith Award as both player and coach—pens a candid, self-aware memoir about her unusually successful career. Staley grew up in “a crammed row home” in North Philadelphia, nicknamed Dirt because “I’d rather play ball than bathe.” Introverted and alert, she learned discipline by observing her mother, Estelle, who earned money cleaning houses, which she did “with pride, like a boss.” Staley was most comfortable on the court, playing point guard, where lack of height mattered less than smarts and competitiveness. After her storied playing days at the University of Virginia—she graduated in 1992—Staley landed an uninspiring job “stacking jeans.” To play professionally, she went to Spain. She “hated it abroad,” but homesickness led to an unlikely, charmingly recounted breakthrough. Watching the Kid ’n Play–starring House Party movies, her “brain froze” when a character said, “You have to do what you don’t want to do to get what you want.” This became her “life motto,” fueling her stellar professional playing career—she joined the Charlotte Sting in 1999, lending star power to the two-year-old WNBA—and three national championships as the University of South Carolina women’s coach. Coaches typically say only nice things about colleagues, but Staley is winningly direct. Tara VanDerveer, who coached the 1996 women’s U.S. Olympic team, “relentlessly” chided Staley and her teammates, taking “it to a place she didn’t need to.” Staley is equally outspoken about her faith and the need for women’s college basketball, where a substantial percentage of the players are Black, to be more “intentional about hiring Black women” and equitably paying them. Her message resonates beyond the gym.
Instructive episodes from the rise and reign of a hardwood heroine.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023365
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Black Privilege Publishing/Atria
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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