Book Review: The Queen of Katwe

I like chess. In college, I hung out with several serious chess players, which resulted in me playing game after game after game on late weekend nights, the lure of personal connections pulling me over the hump of humility as I lost game after game after game. I came to make good friends with chess. I like it's way of pacing my mind, teaching my thinking patience. It does not let me get away with mental or emotional shortcuts; it requires me to follow through. I like the game's elegant simplicity opening out into explosive possibilities, and its peculiar history as a game that became strangely personal to untold players. I like the game's rich narrative and metaphoric textures: chess is for storytellers. It's history is also one steeped in the elite class, which is partly why the story of Phiona Mutesi, a talented player from an impoverished part of Uganda who came into international play as a teenager, is so striking.

My book review of The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl's Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster by Tim Crothers is in this week's issue of The Christian Science Monitor. The book comes out of Crothers' extemely popular article for ESPN Magazine, which has been optioned by Disney films. Excerpt of my review follows:

At its best, “The Queen of Katwe” channels the metaphors implicit in chess to reveal how limits, possibilities, and high stakes shape life in this corner of the world. Crothers quotes (Phiona's chess instructor) Katende, speaking as a teacher: “Someday you will be able to read your opponent’s mind many moves in advance.... You will see what is going to happen on the chessboard before it happens. You are all going to be prophets.”

It’s a gorgeous moment that speaks to the power of this story. But “The Queen of Katwe” was rushed from article to book – only 20 months separate their publications – and the haste is obvious. Not enough substance comes through to justify the broadened scope.

Reporting poverty is a tricky, albeit urgent, act, and challenges escalate when you’re an outsider in both culture and language. Katherine Boo is author of “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” another book about young people in slums (she focuses on India’s Annawadi). In her afterword, Boo discusses the need to compensate for her shortcomings by working “slowly and patiently” – she spent about three years reporting – with the classic tools of journalism: “time spent, attention paid, documentation secured, accounts cross-checked.”

This was not the recipe for “Queen of Katwe.

Crothers, as a sportswriter, knows that the action is better than the post-game interview. So it’s surprising that so much of the book hinges on after-the-fact explanation, rather than real-time observation. While he recreates scenes, they’re leadened by quotes that feel “told,” unlike living language, and by the curse of “first-this, then-that” chronology. It conveys the tenor of a dispatch, rather than a fully realized book.

More dangerously the portrayal of poverty in "Queen of Katwe" lacks nuance. Crothers generalizes about “desperate slum children,” and sometimes extends what he sees in Katwe to encompass the whole 54-country continent. He writes of “a uniquely African peace of mind” that is “more serene than the average American.” Why? It “has to do with access. Many people in Katwe do not know there is anything better for which to strive, which leads to an odd kind of tranquility, which some might call ‘lethargy.’” The use of such sweeping language to describe the “average African” is questionable, to say the least.

 

Image Credit: ChessGames.com