Queen of Katwe by Tim Crothers

 genre: nonfiction

The world that Phiona Mutesi has grown up in is a bleak one. Her home is flooded when it rains, sometimes she must be hungry for a full day between meals and her single mother cannot pay school fees. Life is just one day at a time in the Ugandan slum of Katwe and survival is all Phiona has had time to think about - until the day she sees her older brother sitting in front of a small board with small unfamiliar pieces on it. And Phiona is interested, interested enough that the entire trajectory of her life might be able to change.

I picked this up because I had seen a trailer for the Disney movie but I only had a basic understanding of the story - and it IS a feel good sports story, to a certain extent. But it is also a story of hardship and poverty, the kind that is hard to truly comprehend. It’s about the possibilities that exist when one person truly starts to invest in an impoverished community. It’s about chess - that game of kings - and those who live on the margins with an untapped potential.  The narrative style sometimes frustrated me because we would be introduced to a new character and told their entire life story before until we learned how they fit into the plot and this was done so many times that after a while I got annoyed.   However, I liked the photographs and it was clearly well researched. I feel like I got a good sense for the hardscrabble life of Katwe, of its people and their struggle. It really is an inspiring story and by the end, I was definitely rooting for the Queen of Katwe.