Cover Story / Sports Outreach Institute “AN UNDERDOG IN THE WORLD”—A REVIEW OF THE QUEEN OF KATWE
In October 2010, Tim Crothers wrote “Game of Her Life,” an article for ESPN The Magazine, about Phiona Mutesi, a disadvantaged chess-play- ing teenager fighting fate in the slums of Kampala, Uganda. The article follows a clichéd narrative of inner-city suffering followed by exagger- ated tournament victories, and concludes with chess delivering a panacea for hope. It’s the typical feel-good writing about scholastic chess: “Cliché of Hardship and Exaggerated Small Success.”
Crothers expanded his chess article into The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl’s Dream of Becoming a Grandmas- ter (Scribner, $26). With many passages lifted directly from the article, the book describes Mutesi’s childhood (an endless account of fatherless house- holds, death, poverty, and war), her coach’s childhood (more fatherless households, death, poverty, and war), how she and her coach found chess and found each other, and how chess provided Mutesi an opportunity to travel the world and win money for herself and her family. The book’s climax comes during Mutesi’s trip, at age 14, to Rus- sia for the 2010 Olympiad. When she returns, her classmates cheer and Crothers begins to hint that one day she might become a grandmaster.
The book’s clichéd treatment of poverty and war claims its own victims. Without much improvement over the article, the book ignores character develop- ment and accurate reporting of chess culture. By its last page the exaggeration of Mutesi’s success gets so bad that Crothers actually describes Mutesi as “… one of the best chess players in the world.” In reality, however, Mutesi plays at about class-B strength. (Her 2012 Olympiad FIDE performance rating was 1612.) Crothers omits a discussion about ratings either as a deliberate tac- tic to deceive the lay reader into believing Mutesi is better than she really is, or he failed to understand how important ratings are for legitimizing his claims. Most of the reporting appears to be filtered through Robert Katende, Mutesi’s English-speaking coach. Did words get twisted in the translation or did Crothers hear only what he wanted to write?
important questions would have made Mutesi a rich psychological study and the book a fascinating read. It’s a shame that her heart- breaking story did not receive more honest treatment.
But while the book’s structure, character development, and reporting are weak, the prose style is not. There are some well-written passages. Take this one, for example, which shows Mutesi’s relationship with her siblings and helps provide insight into what a trip to the 2010 Olympiad might have been like for a teen in her situation:
Each night Phiona told her brothers a new and wondrous bedtime story that often held them rapt until dawn. One night she told them about the glit- tering, gleaming airport in a place called Dubai and how if you had some money you could buy anything you could ever imagine … including a beautiful blue car that for some reason had no roof on it. She told them about the cold white flakes that fall from the sky like rain. She told them about how somebody had told her that there are places in Russia where some days the sun never comes up and others when night never comes. She told them about the strange taste of Irish potatoes and about people who wear wires on their teeth to make them straight.
Or this one, which well summarizes Mutesi’s plight:
To be African is to be an underdog in the world. To be Ugandan is to be an under- dog in Africa. To be from Katwe [the poorest section of Kampala] is to be an underdog in Uganda. To be a girl is to be an underdog in Katwe.
The Queen of Katwe by Tim Crothers (New York: Scribner, 2012. Available from USCF Sales, catalog number B0021SS, $25.95)
At 13, when Phiona Mutesi played in her first international tournament, an administrator wrote “Phiona” on her passport application instead of “Fiona.”
How exactly does a 14-year-old girl with no books, no computers, no run- ning water, no food, and no shoes become a class-B player? What were the training methods Mutesi used to overcome her unique situation? How did she learn even the most primitive chess concepts when few people in her country even know how to move the pieces? Answers to these
“Fiona” was the spelling she had originally given herself and had been using up until that time. The new spelling stuck, not because she wanted it to, but because of political reasons, and she’s been forced to use it ever since. Fiona embodied the true character of a young woman who trained hard and literally made a name for herself. Phiona, as described in The Queen of Katwe, merely represents a cliché. Had Crothers profiled the real Fiona instead of his Phiona and reported about real chess instead of his chess, The Queen of Katwe would have been a better book.
~Howard Goldowsky
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