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Overview
Jackie Joyner-Kersee is one of the world's most successful athletes, and has dominated the women's decathlon for many years. With this book, Jackie discusses how she has overcome her difficult early years to rise to the top.
Synopsis
The three-time Olympic gold medalist tells of her struggles and triumphs in her sport and her life.
Publishers Weekly
After six Olympic medals and five world records, most achieved in the grueling heptathalon, Joyner-Kersee can indeed lay claim to being the "greatest." Here, with Sports Illustrated senior editor Steptoe, she tells of her rise to the top, starting with her childhood in East St. Louis, Ill., an industrial town on a downhill slide. She was raised in a loving if strict family, and early on found a coach convinced of her ability to keep advancing in her sports, both basketball and track. Nationwide honors began to come her way when she was in high school and continued at UCLA, where she claims she did not get the coaching she required. Then on the scene came Robert Kersee, who began as her coach, then became her husband. Besides surmounting the obstacles of being African American, poor and troubled by leg problems, probably from overparticipation in sports, Joyner-Kersee continues to face a far greater obstacle: severe asthma. Because she's sometimes careless about taking her medication, she has suffered life-threatening seizures. Her story is inspiring and absorbing. (Oct.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
After six Olympic medals and five world records, most achieved in the grueling heptathalon, Joyner-Kersee can indeed lay claim to being the "greatest." Here, with Sports Illustrated senior editor Steptoe, she tells of her rise to the top, starting with her childhood in East St. Louis, Ill., an industrial town on a downhill slide. She was raised in a loving if strict family, and early on found a coach convinced of her ability to keep advancing in her sports, both basketball and track. Nationwide honors began to come her way when she was in high school and continued at UCLA, where she claims she did not get the coaching she required. Then on the scene came Robert Kersee, who began as her coach, then became her husband. Besides surmounting the obstacles of being African American, poor and troubled by leg problems, probably from overparticipation in sports, Joyner-Kersee continues to face a far greater obstacle: severe asthma. Because she's sometimes careless about taking her medication, she has suffered life-threatening seizures. Her story is inspiring and absorbing. (Oct.)Library Journal
Three-time Olympic gold medalist Joyner-Kersee tells of her life off the beaten track.Kirkus Reviews
Three-time Olympic gold medalist Joyner-Kersee, with Sports Illustrated editor Steptoe, delivers an autobiography that outshines much of the dismal competition.Track star Joyner grew up in the impoverished city of East St. Louis, playing basketball and running track despite family hardships and community hostility to girls' athletics, and going to UCLA on an athletic scholarship (Joyner-Kersee makes good use of her UCLA history education; aspects of her life—her father's employment troubles and her own athletic opportunites, for instance—are skillfully placed in a sociopolitical context). Her parents divorced soon after she left home. Her mother died of a rare bacterial infection, and her death is wrenchingly described, as is the author's painful decision to take her mother off life-support. She is honest about her family—her problems with her father's hard drinking and bullying, and her complex relationship with her strong-willed husband and coach, Bobby Kersee. Her brother, Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner, and his wife, Florence ("Flo Jo") Griffith Joyner, eventually stopped using Bobby as their coach; oddly, Joyner-Kersee leaves this break unexplained. Readers are reassured that everyone has moved on and gotten over it, but one can't help wanting to know what happened. Flo was widely quoted at the time as saying that Bobby had a "cultlike" coaching style. Did she really say that? We'll never know. Also frustrating is Joyner's tendency—shared by many other athletes—to present the most banal personal revelations as wisdom worth sharing with others: "Today might look gloomy, but tomorrow will be bright" is one such pearl.
Despite some omissions and lapses into pseudo-inspiration, this is frank and lucid, and presents an intimate picture of a star athlete and her sport.