One Life

STAND UP
 
I was on the team bus driving through the suburbs of Chicago when I picked up a call from my agent. It was September 2016, and my team, FC Seattle Reign, had just played the Chicago Red Stars in one of the last games of the season. That wasn t why my agent was calling. Dan Levy had represented me for almost ten years and we d been through a few things together. Five years earlier, he d been a big part of the discussion around my decision to come out as the first, and for a long time practically the only, gay player on the US Women s National Team which is hilarious given the number of gays on the team and he d seen me through injuries and disappointments without losing his cool. Now he sounded concerned. This is blowing up, he said. The actual game that night had been nothing special. Chicago, like New York and Los Angeles, isn t a soccer town, for reasons no one can quite put their finger on. You might get people out for a national team game, but no way are they turning up on a random Sunday night in September for a league match. We d played to a small crowd of three thousand people and the score had been a lackluster 2 2. But at the press conference afterward, the first question out of the gate had little to do with the game itself: Had I intended to kneel during the national anthem, and if so, why?

I had anticipated being asked this question, of course. The decision to kneel wasn t one I d made lightly. At the same time, I hadn t given much thought to how it might be received. In trivial contexts, I can be impulsive the kind of person who dyes their hair pink the night before a huge tournament, for example but it wasn t that. If I didn t rehearse outcomes before kneeling, it s because kneeling, to me, felt more like an imperative than a choice. Any risk assessment I did wasn t premised on how my actions might land, but on calculating the risk huge, societal, unignorable, in my view of doing nothing.

Still, I wasn t expecting

Megan Rapinoe with Emma Brockes

One Life makes it clear that Rapinoe s greatest accomplishments may ultimately come away from the soccer pitch. She s a new kind of American hero. San Francisco Chronicle

One Life will inspire readers to go out and leave their mark on the world no matter how scary it is or how uncomfortable they may feel in the process. PopSugar
 
Rapinoe's 'signature pose' from the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup is synonymous to the feeling we got when finishing this book: heart full, arms wide and ready to take up space in this world.   USA Today

An invigorating read that s incredibly hard to put down. . . . One Life is an outstanding narrative of an exemplary life. Megan Rapinoe s many accomplishments on the pitch are celebrated but what takes center stage is how she uses those moments to further the causes she believes in. It s that combination of transcendent athletic accomplishment and iconoclastic social justice activism that makes Rapinoe unique as an athlete and now as an author.   Out Sports

Megan Rapinoe isn t breaking the glass ceiling she is shattering it, all while sharing her stage with those on the margins. She is a real-life superhero, a coconspirator to the oppressed, who is as tenacious off the field as she is on the field. This is an inspiring moment for a powerful force in social justice. Patrisse Khan-Cullors, cofounder of Black Lives Matter; New York Times bestselling coauthor of When They Call You a Terrorist; joint recipient of the Sydney Peace Prize 
 
Megan Rapinoe s One Life is an incredible self-portrait of a new way to be public and female: to be able to enjoy and celebrate how extraordinary one is while also being attuned to the needs of others. It s a manifesto of how to have a beating heart while also being a beast on the field. Natalie Portman, Academy Award winner; co-owner of Angel City

Uplifting. . . . A compelling