TAKE UP SPACE

A unique portrait of one of the Democratic Party’s powerhouses.

This bright, photo-heavy biography creatively spans the life of Ocasio-Cortez (b. 1989) from her youth through her groundbreaking political career. At the heart of the book is Miller’s impassioned, four-part minibiography of the youngest woman to ever serve in Congress. Born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican American Catholic family, Ocasio-Cortez excelled early in school. She was a “brown-skinned, opinionated, but guarded,” science-minded girl who went by Sandy, and she relentlessly honed her inquisitive nature into the “precocious insistence that would later become a trademark.” She entered Boston University in 2007 as a pre-med student, but her interest in politics grew after an internship with Ted Kennedy and, later, involvement with Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. She was elected to the House of Representatives at 28, backed by progressive grassroots organizations amid the “dystopian” nightmares of the Trump era. Following the biographical sections, the book presents diverse perspectives from a variety of contributors, including Josh Gondelman, Michelle Ruiz, Andrew Rice, Rebecca Traister, David Wallace-Wells, Pia Guerra, and Andrea González-Ramírez. Pages of art, opinion, photography, congressional testimony, and transcripts of seminal speeches deepen the chronicle of Ocasio-Cortez’s heritage, personal life, and career aspirations and accomplishments. A graphic novel–style section details her engagement with the U.S.–Mexico border ordeal, and the concluding pages include her Instagram Live speech, which “had a now-familiar rhetorical shape, moving from an intimate sermon to a fire-and-brimstone speech, as always without notes and in almost perfect spoken paragraphs.” Regardless of political inclination, readers interested in learning Ocasio-Cortez’s full story will find a variety of ways to do so in this thorough and creative biography of an outspoken, unflinchingly confident leader from the Bronx who upended Democratic politics in her 20s. It’s the most complete picture we will likely have until she writes a memoir.

A fully immersive, creatively formatted appreciation for an indefatigable politician and people’s champion.