The Grass Ceiling by Eimear Ryan (2023), published by Penguin
What is it about? Camogie player and novelist Eimear Ryan explores what it is like to be female in a male-dominated sporting world. With questions of identity, status, competition, equality and self-expression, Ryan sets The Grass Ceiling at the nexus of sport and gender.
Why should you read it? Winner of Eason's Sports Book of the Year 2023, this is an informed, nuanced and personal exploration of the author's life, suitable for everyone who loves sport.
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Meet Eimear Ryan, author of The Grass Ceiling | An Post Irish Book of The Year 2023
What the critics say: "Reading this book felt like letting out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding in. Not only was it the first time that I had read someone accurately portray all the confusion I had felt growing up, not understanding why my passion was different to others, it was also the first time I started to understand properly how that had affected other aspects of my life. How sport had both given me a voice and sought to take it away. It had made me appreciate my body and what it could do and also made me incredibly aware of how it looked in baggy jerseys that weren’t designed for my frame." - Kathleen McNamee, Irish Times.
The origins of The Grass Ceiling… An essay called The Fear of Winning which was published in arts journal Winter Papers in 2016.
For readers of… Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World, Lauren Fleshman; This is My Life: Days and Nights in the GAA, Ciaran Murphy; All In: An Autobiography, Billie Jean King.
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