<div dir="ltr"><div>All,</div><div>Please find attached and below Ceala Fenton's review of Perdita Felicien's sport biography <i>My Mother's Daughter: A Memoir of Struggle and Triumph.</i></div><div>Thanks</div><div>Duncan</div><div><br></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">Felicien, Perdita. <i>My Mother’s Daughter: A Memoir of Struggle
and Triumph. </i>Doubleday Canada, 2021.<span></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">Reviewed by Caela Fenton, University
of Oregon<span></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">“Sport
mimics everyday life. It can be rewarding, and it can be entirely unfair. What
we believe we deserve, what we have worked hard to attain, isn’t always what we
get.”<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">With
these words, ten-time Canadian national champion, four-time world championship
medallist and Olympic hurdler Perdita Felicien rebuffs the pervasive cultural
narrative of sport—a powerful act by a notable athlete.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">Oprah
Winfrey has a popular quote along the lines of: “Running is the greatest
metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it.” And this
quote represents the pervasive cultural narrative of sport, which sport
psychologists refer to as the “performance narrative,” the stories we see about
going all in, hard work being unstoppable, and the requirement for athletes to
exclude or regulate all other areas of their life to focus on sport. The
performance narrative tells us that when we dedicate ourselves entirely, we’ll
win, top the podium, break the record—and that those things are what make us
important.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">Perdita
Felicien is an athlete that has, in many respects, been publicly defined by a
failure. So how does she personally define herself in her memoir? Well, it
means throwing out what we expect of a “sports story” and demands that we look
for meaning beyond winning and identity beyond the singular figure of “the
athlete.”<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">Felicien
began writing what would become <i>My
Mother’s Daughter</i> (Doubleday Canada) after retiring from professional sport
in 2013. Determined not to work with a ghost writer, as many athletes do,
Felicien worked through a creative writing certificate at the University of
Chicago to hone her style. It was there that she decided to, in her words,
“break the rules” of self-life-writing by starting the story before she was
born. <i>My Mother’s Daughter</i> begins
with her mother Catherine’s childhood selling seashell necklaces to tourists on
the beaches of St. Lucia.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">Felicien
frames this decision by stating, “I could have just told you my sports
story...but I could never just write a sports story...the foundation of my life
is my mother’s story. How could I tell the sports story if you don’t know how I
got here?” As such, <i>My Mother’s Daughter</i>
is a sports story in a refreshing light, one that communicates how sport does
not exist in a vacuum, no athlete is just “an athlete,” that sports stories are
also intergenerational stories and immigration stories, and that they can
contain domestic abuse, racism and financial instability.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">For
those expecting details of a collegiate and professional training program, workout
descriptions, or advice about how to improve their hurdling, this is not your
book. Felicien doesn’t even get to her first experience with track and field
until about halfway through the memoir. But what comes before that experience
is foundational to understanding her as a person and as an athlete—charting her
mother’s struggles as an underpaid domestic labourer and Felicien’s complex
relationship with her father and his treatment of her mother. The women’s
shelter, The Denise House, that Felicien and her family stayed in for a period
of time in 1987, is receiving a portion of all proceeds from <i>My Mother’s Daughter</i>.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">The
performance narrative is almost universally identifiable in mainstream athletic
memoirs. Media columnist Bryan Curtis pithily describes the formula for the
“jockography” as 1) beginning with the athlete’s most memorable performance; 2)
charting how sport got them through their unhappy childhood and; 3) follows
their trajectory to stardom. This formula is uncannily similar to the “athlete
hero narrative” that literary scholars have identified, in which the underdog
experiences some success, faces a series of difficult setbacks, goes all-in,
rallies, overcomes, and then he (as Angie Abdou and Jamie Dopp note in their
anthology of Canadian sport literature “yes, it is almost always a he”) wins. (<i>Once a Runner</i>, anyone?).<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">Felicien,
conversely, does not just chart her rise to success (in fact, she seems to
frame her incredible athletic talent as the least interesting thing about her),
but also intimately details the heartbreaking experience of falling in the 2004
Olympic Finals when she was the gold medal favourite. In the book, she gives
herself some of the space to grieve that loss, which is not something athletes
are encouraged to do, in part because of the enculturation of the performance
narrative, which means experiences of failure have to be immediately framed as
reasons to “stage a comeback” or “overcome.” Felicien writes: “Looking back,
what I needed wasn’t someone to help me get back on the horse—at least not
initially. What I needed was someone removed from the pursuit of sporting
excellence, who was simply there to help me deal with my broken heart.”<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">And
then, during training for the 2008 Olympics, or “the comeback,” a terrible accident
occurs during training. During a practice, Felicien and a training partner’s
hurdles were placed on the wrong marks, a small mistake with the major
consequence of Felicien fracturing her foot. It is pretty hard to frame an
experience like that as: “you get out of it what you put into it.” Felicien
ultimately ends up attending the 2008 Olympics, not as an athlete, but as part
of the broadcasting team.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><i><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">My Mother’s Daughter</span></i><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"> is not a story of overcoming the
origins of one’s birth, or overcoming injury, but rather one that affirms that
you do not have to stand on the top of the podium to be worthy of love, respect
and safety. Running, and the broader sport community, could use more of such
narratives, those that provide counterstories to a singularity in focus on
performance, and place athletes not as icons of rugged individualism, but
within their relational networks of kinship.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN">The
ultimate message of the book is delivered by Felicien’s mother to her in the
aftermath of her 2004 fall: “<i>You</i> are
the gold, my darling.”<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN"><span> </span></span></p>
</div><div><i></i></div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past<br><br>Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.<br>Professor of History<br>Book Review Editor<br><i>AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature</i><br>Ashland University<br>Ashland, OH 44805<br>USA<br></div></div></div></div>