Katende’s methods of teaching chess to restless children are fascinating. He narrates the curious history of Katwe’s settlement, the difficulties navigated by several generations of Phiona’s family, and the tradition of chess as a game for elites. He digs into the people and places surrounding her. In book form, Crothers is able to broaden and deepen Phiona’s remarkable story. And along the way he discovered a giant talent in Phiona. Katende succeeded in getting a group of kids so enthused about chess that they began playing on their own with bottle caps. Living in a shack with her mother and siblings and unable to attend school because of the family’s poverty, Phiona was about 9 years old – and hungry and illiterate – when she first met Robert Katende, a war refugee and soccer player-turned-missionary who hatched the seemingly unlikely plan of teaching chess to impoverished children in Katwe. One of four children, Phiona lost her father to AIDs when she was still a little girl. He’s now expanded his feature into a book: The Queen of Katwe. His article about Phiona for ESPN: The Magazine was a finalist for a National Magazine Award and has been optioned by Disney films. Phiona’s story is worth attention, and sportswriter Tim Crothers caught on. She competed at the World Chess Olympiad – the world’s most prestigious team chess event – in Siberia in 2010 and just weeks ago in Istanbul, Turkey, where she won a title that points her toward becoming a grandmaster. Phiona is Uganda’s national chess champion, a title she earned as a teenager. As audiences and actors demand more complex roles for people of color, let’s hope we see more groundbreaking projects like this one.”Phiona Mutesi is a young chess prodigy from Uganda whose fierce mind has sparked notice not only because it’s relatively rare to see an African woman playing elite chess, but also because she’s from Katwe – an impoverished corner of Uganda’s teeming capital city of Kampala. Since 7 percent of Uganda’s adult population is HIV-positive, the film would have benefited from tackling this topic.ĭespite this, Queen of Katwe is still a bright addition to Disney’s roster. The film leaves out the fact that Phiona’s father died of AIDS and that she and her mother have never been tested for fear that they, too, are hiv-positive. It’s remarkable to see a young woman-especially in a family film-name the environmental issues, poverty, sexism, and sexual violence she faces. “Soon, the men will come for me,” Phiona states plainly. Years later, after a flood carries away all of her family’s belongings, she says, “I made a plan against the rains, Coach, but the water didn’t care.” She then explains that her older sister has gotten pregnant by a man who courted and then dumped her. Coach repeatedly tells Phiona that as long as she thinks, makes a plan, and executes it, she’ll be fine. The script even undercuts its own underdog sports metaphors. In fact, when she wins her first competition, a female commissioner gives her a trophy and announces, “Such aggressiveness in a girl is quite a treasure.” Phiona doesn’t get distracted by boys or beauty. There are no wild animals, no wide-open landscapes. The only white folks onscreen are Phiona’s competitors in a tournament in Russia-and they don’t have speaking roles. Unlike most Disney and other Western films set in Africa and focused on Black people, this film doesn’t employ lazy, racist, heteronormative tropes. Over the next five years, Phiona attempts to achieve grandmaster status while still navigating the struggles of her daily life. Robert Katende (David Oyelowo), who the kids call Coach, quickly realizes she’s a prodigy. Once she learns the game, she can see eight moves ahead. One day, she follows her brother to a dilapidated church, and she finds a refuge where kids are given daily servings of porridge-and chess. She walks miles to fetch fresh water daily and sells maize in the streets. Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga), a girl from a slum in Katwe, Uganda, hustles to support her widowed mother (Lupita Nyong’o) and siblings by finding food and maintaining shelter.
Queen of katwe book movie#
Based on a biographical sports essay published in ESPN The Magazine, which later became a book, this feel-good movie deserves applause. Subscribe today!ĭisney rarely challenges traditional representations of race and gender, but it does so in the remarkable Queen of Katwe. This article appears in our 2017 Winter issue, Chaos.
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