Musa @Okwonga's Raheem Sterling (2020) is part of Scholastic’s Football Legends series. Sterling’s journey to the very top of professional football provides ample material for a story that would interest a football fan – but Okwonga’s text deserves an even broader readership. 
@Okwonga @sterling7 Okwonga focuses on the drama and emotion of Sterling’s journey from a child in Jamaica to a schoolboy kicking a ball a short distance from Wembley Stadium to a man scoring a hat-trick for England inside the stadium.
@Okwonga @sterling7 He writes of the love between Raheem, his mother and sister and the sacrifices each make in order to build a better life for themselves and each other. Sterling’s resilience and determination to succeed are emphasized, but so too is his vulnerability.
@Okwonga @sterling7 The biography sensitively details Sterling’s decision to use Instagram to highlight the way a white team-mate was praised for buying a home for his parents whilst a black team-mate was criticized for being unduly extravagant when doing exactly the same thing:
@Okwonga @sterling7 “In just a few weeks, the newspapers that were the biggest bullies changed how they wrote about Raheem, and about some other black footballers...
@Okwonga @sterling7 "They realized that Raheem was too popular for them to pick on, and that if they kept picking on black players then their readers wouldn’t like them so much.” (p78-9)
@Okwonga @sterling7 Whilst Sterling’s life-story shows us that racism has not gone away, his response to it perhaps marks a shift. Not only has he achieved on-pitch success... like Black players from Walter Tull onwards, he has also spoken up about racism – and been applauded by many for doing so.
@Okwonga @sterling7 In so doing, he has rejected the ‘go back or fit in’ binary that has been presented to so many sportspeople of colour, and instead achieved success as a team-player on his own terms. (Full article: booksforkeeps.co.uk/issue/240/chil… ) #ReflectingRealities
