‘FIERCE: My Fight for Nothing Less’: Marian Washington’s autobiography a stirring, storied history of one basketball’s hidden legends

Correspondent Vicki L. Friedman delves into Marian Washington’s new autobiography

by Vicki L. Friedman

“I grew up on a bus.”

I thought I heard wrong. Marian Washington was telling me about her early life in a conference call with Ascend Books. I was asking a few questions about her background in hopes of becoming the co-author to her autobiography that was long overdue.

“What was that?”

“I grew up in a bus.”

I spoke to the publisher the next morning and asked what he heard. “It sounded like she said bus,” he admitted. “Might make for a good part of the story.”

“FIERCE: My Fight for Nothing Less” was released on Sept. 6 – available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Rally House locations in Lawrence, Kansas, and multiple other outlets.

“The lessons unpacked in this book are incredible,” said Dawn Staley, the Naismith Hall-of-Famer, one of several testimonials in the along with those from Tara VanDerveer, Rebecca Lobo, Carolyn Peck, Venus Lacy, Teresa Edwards, Ann Meyers Drysdale, Donna Lopiano, Brenda VanLengen and Tamecka Dixon.

Lynette Woodard, also in the Naismith Hall of Fame, wrote the Afterword.

Many with even a strong sense of women’s basketball history might only know that Marian Washington…