by Jennfier Shahade, 320pp. (Siles Press, 2005)

In the game of chess, the strongest piece—the Queen—is often referred to as "bitch," and being female has been long considered a major disadvantage. Chess Bitch, written by the 2004 U.S. Woman’s Chess Champion, is an eye-opening account of how today’s young female chess players are successfully knocking down the doors to this traditionally male game, infiltrating the male-owned sporting subculture of international chess, and giving the phrase "play like a girl" a whole new meaning.

Through interviews with and observation of the young globetrotting women chess players who challenge male domination, Chess Bitch shines a harsh light on the game’s gender bias. Shahade begins by profiling the lives of great women players from history, starting with Vera Menchik, who defeated male professionals with incredible frequency and became the first woman’s World Champion in 1927. She then investigates the women’s chess dynasties in Georgia and China. She interviews the famous Polgar sisters, who refused to play in separate women's tournaments. She details her own chess adventures—traveling to tournaments from Reykjavik to Istanbul. And Shahade introduces us to such lesser-known chess personalities as the flamboyant Zambian player Linda Nangwale and the transgendered Texan Angela Alston and the European female chess players who hop from one country to another, playing chess by day and partying long into the night. For those who think of chess as two people sitting quietly across a table, Shahade paints a colorful world that most chess fans never knew existed.

Jennifer Shahade is an international chess icon. A chess master and two-time American Women’s Chess Champion (2002, 2004), She has represented the U.S in international competitions in countries all over the world, including Spain, Russia, China, India, and Brazil. In 2002, Shahade received a degree in comparative literature from NYU, where she was an editor for the literary magazine Brio. Her writing has appeared in Chess Life Magazine, New In Chess, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Through the non-profit Chess-In-The Schools, she coaches inner-city youths, including a girls’ class, and the three-time National Junior High Championship team, I.S. 318. Shahade is a member of the artist collective Mano/Damno, a group that aims to blur the boundaries between life and art, and has participated in performance art projects at New York’s psychogeography festival, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and The Viewing Room Art Gallery.