Raised a Warrior: A Memoir of Soccer, Grit, and Leveling the Playing Field

Petruccelli, a former captain of the Harvard women’s soccer team, scores with this powerful memoir that effortlessly blends recollections from her own life and her struggle for gender equity in sports. Born in South Pasadena, Calif., in 1974 to a family of athletes and sports fanatics, she started playing soccer at age five along with her twin sister. Her love of the game led her to eventually play on Harvard’s women’s soccer team, where she took a “big step toward self-awareness” in both her friendships and her sexuality. After graduating in 1996, she started a family, began writing about women’s sports, and—inspired by athletes such as Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers, who “blazed the trail that I arrived on”—became an advocate for gender equality in soccer, speaking on panels about gender inclusion in sports and helping film a documentary about how female athletes are transforming the game. She details the blatant discrimination her predecessors faced, sharing, for instance, that the first women’s world cup wasn’t “FIFA sanctioned” because FIFA wasn’t “confident” they could “put on a good show.” Petruccelli’s passion for using her knowledge as a tool to educate others is both heartening and galvanizing. Fans of the sport and the women changing it will be delighted. (July)