Part of the chapter book series inspired by the number one New York Times bestseller She Persisted, by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger, this biography of Kamala Harris covers her life from childhood through her 2024 presidential run, ending just short of its conclusion. Author Raakhee Mirchandani emphasizes Harris’s work for social justice, noting that “Kamala learned from a very early age the importance of using your voice to spark change.”
Her immigrant parents instilled this value in Kamala and her sister, and Kamala tried to live by it, by being an “upstander, not a bystander” when a classmate was bullied, and representing “the citizens of the community and the victims, those who had been wronged and deserved justice.” She fought for marriage equality, too, and the book spends several pages on the Proposition 8 marriage equality battle in California, noting that Harris performed the wedding ceremony for Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, the first same-sex couple to marry in California after Prop 8 was overturned.
We also see some of Harris’s failures, from putting too much salt into a batch of lemon bars as a child to failing the bar exam on her first try, and how she learned from her mistakes.
While the book clearly sets up Harris as a positive role model, it is not blindly adulatory. For example, when discussing the truancy laws she supported as San Francisco district attorney, which “could fine or jail parents if their kids’ truancy continued to be a problem,” the book also notes the arguments of those who opposed this.
Mirchandani does an excellent job of explaining concepts like political campaigns and conventions to young readers, but also infuses the book with a vibrant sense of Harris’s family and multi-ethnic heritage. She observes, for example, that her mother “would make okra, sometimes in an Indian style, with turmeric and mustard seeds, and sometimes as a gumbo with soul food flavoring, by adding dried shrimp and sausage.” Harris’s wedding to Doug Emhoff also “honored both Kamala’s Indian heritage and Doug’s Jewish heritage … with traditions from both cultures.”
Backmatter includes suggestions for how readers can persist like Harris, such as by being an upstander, running for leadership positions or otherwise serving one’s community, trying new recipes, learning about other pioneering women of color, and pronouncing names correctly. (The book notes that “Kamala’s name is often mispronounced, sometimes purposely to be mean to her.”)
For readers ready for more than a picture book biography of Harris, this is an excellent and inspiring next step.
