An insightful memoir from a figure skating champion about her life as a bisexual professional athlete, perfect for readers of Fierce by Aly Reisman and Forward by Abby Wambach.
Karina Manta has had a busy few years: Not only did she capture the hearts of many with her fan-favorite performance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, she also became the first female figure skater on Team USA to come out as queer. Her Modern Love essay "I Can´t Hate My Body if I Love Hers" was published, and then she joined the circus--Cirque du Soleil´s on-ice show, AXEL.
Karina´s memoir covers these experiences and much more. Attending a high school with 4,000 students, you´d expect to know more than two openly gay students, but Karina didn´t meet an out-lesbian until she was nearly seventeen--let alone any other kind of queer woman. But this isn´t just a story about her queerness. It´s also a story about her struggle with body image in a sport that prizes delicate femininity. It´s a story about panic attacks, and first crushes, and all the crushes that followed, and it´s a story about growing up, feeling different than everybody around her and then realizing that everyone else felt different too.