Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back

The second I saw Burn It All Down podcast co-host Jessica Luther tweet about her forthcoming book Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back, I was so excited. Burn It All Down (“the feminist sports podcast you need”) is one of my favorite podcasts, a show that amplifies non-male voices in sports, and discusses equality, racism, misogyny, and more.

But let’s get to the book: Luther co-wrote Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back with fellow sportswriter Kavitha A. Davidson, and they dive into “the intersections between sports and politics, sports and culture, sports and our own identities, sports and the ills of the world. We want to sit in those intersections.” And sit, thoughtfully, they do; there are chapters on racist mascots to domestic violence to doping in sports. One chapter on how the Olympics harm local communities but brings women’s sports to a global stage, made me reflect, hard, on why I love mega sporting events — and what could be so much better about them. How do we reconcile hating the Olympics for the damage they leave in their wake, but loving how they amplify sports and athletes outside the “mainstream”? There are no clear answers — only messy in-betweens. My favorite, however, was the last chapter, which in many ways was the thesis of their book: on embracing the fact that athletes, and sports, are political. And to ignore that, or to call sports “apolitical,” is a major failure. A well-researched, engaging collection of essays on all the messiness that surrounds the world of sports.

Rating: ★★★★★