Megan Rapinoe is not a fast reader. “When I get really into a book I’m like, You don’t need to read every letter,” she jokes over the ubiquitous Zoom call. “You could just read the words.” So she’s a little bit nervous to be starting a book club. Fresh off a bronze-medal win for Team USA in Tokyo, the soccer star announced a partnership with Austin-based book-subscription company Literati; she’ll lead a group called “The Call In,” which will focus on literature related to her activist passions. Her first choice for the club is #MeToo founder Tarana Burke’s Unbound—which she admittedly hasn’t read yet. (Her copy has yet to arrive in the mail.)
Still, she has no shortage of enthusiasm for Burke’s work. And she’s eager to hand over the microphone. “For a long time, it was me talking about racial justice or equal pay or women’s rights,” she tells me. “And I think it’s time to move past that and get [other] people’s voices out there.” In a separate interview, Burke even told Rapinoe that she envisioned Unbound being read and digested in a group setting. “Particularly for survivors, maybe even for Black girls, there are places where it might be great to process in a group,” Burke said. “There are people who this will resonate with deeply.” Rapinoe spoke to Vanity Fair about the process of doing exactly that, as well as her reading habits, her future as an activist-athlete, and, naturally, gay hair.
Megan Rapinoe: I’m very jealous of your hair. That looks amazing. I want to shave my head so bad. [Note: The interviewer has a buzz cut.]
Vanity Fair: Why don’t you?
I’m still scared. I’m scared that I’m going to look like a hard-boiled egg with a mouth.
I think everyone should do it once in their life.
I know. I’m getting closer. I’ve been bleaching my hair for 10 years, and now there’s pink on top of it and it ends up looking like this [gestures] most of the time. I’m like, Well, here we are.
Well, put it in your back pocket. It saves a lot of time. Speaking of which, with everything going on in your life, when do you find time to read?
I read a bit on planes and definitely in hotels. I’m more of a nighttime reader. This last trip to Tokyo was a little different because everything was different, but I try not to watch TV in hotels at night. I’m not a voracious reader; I’m more like, ‘Oh, this topic is interesting to me,’ or, ‘This person is amazing on this topic.’ To be honest, I am a little nervous [about the book club]. It’s going to force me to stay on schedule; it’s kind of out of my comfort zone.
Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction?
Nonfiction. I’m the same way with shows; I’m obsessed with documentaries.
It sounds like you’re generally obsessed with the human experience.
I’m very much obsessed with it. Because everything we were taught—or at least what I was taught—isn’t really the whole truth. We’re all told this lie, but we all know it’s a lie. You can do your damnedest to fit into this tiny little box, and to externally check some boxes, but you know that that’s not really [how it works]. Nobody’s like, oh, check all those boxes and then you’re happy. I think it’s fascinating that we’re all going through this together. We all know it’s bullshit. But we just keep doing the same thing.
That sounds like how a lot of people experience queerness: thinking one thing for half your life, then coming out and your whole perspective changes.
I love being gay because, first and foremost, it forces you to be like, What do I want? What do I want to look like? Who am I in the world? Hetero people aren’t forced down that path, whereas queer people are. So then I’m kind of looking at everyone like, you guys, it’s a lie.
If heteronormativity is a lie, what else is?
It’s a big lie.
What book do you remember reading that really moved you?
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s We Were Eight Years in Power. I’d read a couple of the essays during the Obama years, but putting them all together and being able to think about our country from that perspective—that was amazing. I felt it put together the puzzle of society. Especially in America, the story we’re told just doesn’t add up. You don’t just work hard and then you’re successful—that’s not how it goes.
After George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent protests, a lot of outlets published anti-racist reading lists. Many of those books sold out, and there was a lot of conversation around them. What are your thoughts on that trend—the pros, the cons, the complexities of it—as you consider which books to introduce to club members?
As I’m sure a lot of those authors do, I have mixed feelings about it. Those book sales probably aren’t as high now as they were then, but we still have a lot of people who need to continue to do the work. Through the book club, and for myself personally, [it’s important to] understand that there’s never a level you’ll get to where you’re like, I’m good. You obviously had a big spike in people posting about Black Lives Matter and buying Black-authored books and reading about racial justice. I hope that they’re like, Okay, I read this book. Now onto the next, now the next.
You’re the only one who knows if you’re really committing to breaking down your biases. You can buy all the books you want, say whatever you want, post whatever you want, but only you know. So encouraging people to get better, to do something every day, I think is where we need to go.
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“The Story We’re Told Just Doesn’t Add Up”: Megan Rapinoe Wants to Blow Your Mind With Her Book Club - Vanity Fair
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