The Queen of Katwe

The Queen of Katwe (2016), a biography by American author Tim Crothers, chronicles the life of Phiona Mutesi, a Ugandan woman who became a chess prodigy and later a world-renowned chess champion. The book contextualizes Mutesi’s formative development in the slums of a country fraught with war and economic strife, which she endured thanks to her parents, who fostered in her a love of the intellectual life, and which she eventually was able to leave. The book received much visibility for its focus on a chess master who is not white and male, combining this professional achievement with the unique, competitive challenges of being, or becoming, an African woman in a rapidly globalizing world.

The book describes Katwe, the slum where Mutesi grew up. Katwe first became a site for residential life at the beginning of the 1970s. Not long after it was established, worsening civil war and poverty in the region shaped it into a slum community lacking adequate public sanitation. Mutesi’s mother, Harriet Nakku, is a single parent unable to lift the family out of poverty in a country that affords little opportunity. Without any formal education or skills, she resorts to low-paying odd jobs to support her children.

Crothers introduces Robert Katende, the man who would become Mutesi’s chess teacher. Katende also comes from severe poverty, managing to make his way through the taxing educational ranks by earning scholarships for his soccer skills. He converts to born-again Christianity after a sporting event in which he nearly dies in a freak accident. Once he graduates from university, he takes up work at an American NGO Sports Outreach, which offers a blend of religious and social support and educational pathways to children living in the slums of Uganda. During his experience here, Katende realizes that many of the children do not really wish to pursue sports excellence, which they see as an oft-tried but unlikely route to educational and economic mobility. Katende resolves to begin a chess program as an alternative.



One day, as Katende is helping to distribute porridge to children at Sports Outreach, Phiona Mutesi arrives, having tagged along with her brother. Fiddling with the chess pieces, she picks up the rules. Crothers gives some early background on Mutesi: in early childhood, she lacked even a rudimentary education, since her mother could not afford tuition. Further, she faced two near-death experiences related to illness. These traumas instilled in her a hotheaded temperament. Gradually, Mutesi is transformed into a calm and kind young girl as the sport of chess teaches her the value of patience and reflection. Soon, Sports Outreach receives funds from an American memorial scholarship to send many of its children to school.

Noticing his chess students’ rapid improvement, Katende enters them in a number of tournaments in Uganda. Mutesi quickly rises to the top of the class, winning the national championship for women under the age of twenty. Astounded by her progress, Katende steps up Mutesi’s training. Their concerted effort leads to Mutesi winning the national junior championship two years in a row.

After her second win in 2009, Mutesi wins the International Children’s Chess Tournament, which represents all of Africa’s best players. During this trip, Mutesi realizes that life can be much different than the one she has experienced in the slums. Evidence of a life outside of Uganda deepens her resolve to use her talents to leave the slums behind. She goes on to qualify for the International Chess Olympiad, Russia’s biggest tournament and one of the chess world’s most significant. Here, she is soundly defeated. Rather than give up, she redoubles her effort to become a grandmaster. She returns to Uganda and wins yet another national tournament, which elevates her rank to the country’s top female player. When asked how she achieved so much, she replies that she is inspired by her dedication to the Christian faith.



In the years leading up to the time of Crothers’ writing, Mutesi turns to teaching more Ugandan children how to play chess. The same scholarship that allowed her to serendipitously discover the sport supports her path through secondary school. However, her family is unable to escape the slums, and social norms place pressure on her to bear children as an investment in the social and economic support they can provide.

Crothers casts Mutesi’s fate as unresolved due to her unique and precarious position as both a Ugandan woman who is subject to a difficult history and culture, and a world-recognized chess prodigy. Mutesi’s efforts to help her people suggest a motive even deeper than a love of chess: a resolute will to lift up her nation by using her personal story to prove that the Ugandan people have an abundance of gifts waiting to be shown to the world.