These Heavy Black Bones - Ajulu-Bushell, Rebecca Achieng
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Erscheint vorauss. 6. Juni 2024
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Competitiveness, like all things, is a practice. But I was born with it baked in, a head start, a small beast locked in a too-small cage, snarling at the bars whenever there was a task at hand. My mother started feeding it young. Maybe she'd learnt what my father had always known: that I might have to work twice as hard to have half as much. Rebecca was born a ?freedom baby', a child whose birth coincided with the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, to a white mother and Black father. She was in-between, a breathing blend of her parents' skin, well-acquainted with that unsettling…mehr

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Produktbeschreibung
Competitiveness, like all things, is a practice. But I was born with it baked in, a head start, a small beast locked in a too-small cage, snarling at the bars whenever there was a task at hand. My mother started feeding it young. Maybe she'd learnt what my father had always known: that I might have to work twice as hard to have half as much. Rebecca was born a ?freedom baby', a child whose birth coincided with the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, to a white mother and Black father. She was in-between, a breathing blend of her parents' skin, well-acquainted with that unsettling sense of non-belonging from an early age. But the water welcomed her strong body and she caught the eye of coaches at swimming schools in the UK. Fuelled by a natural competitiveness honed on the sharp edge of her mother's love, Rebecca plunged into the hothouse of British swimming, and soon was persuaded to swap sporting nationalities, leaving Kenya behind to pledge allegiance to Great Britain. Rebecca learns that training is designed to be punishing - to break down, excoriate, and puncture pain barriers. She learns that to swim a perfect race is to experience a sort of ecstatic communion between body and liquid world. And she also learns that her body, her Black body, is a commodity that other people feel entitled to, whose performance is constantly scrutinised, debated, and subjected to a racism both universal and endemic to the white world of swimming.
Autorenporträt
Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell is an ex-elite athlete who swam for both Great Britain and Kenya over a 10-year career. She is a former British Champion, world number one and the first Black woman ever to swim for Great Britain. Her 2019 documentary, Breakfast in Kisumu, which she directed and produced, premiered at renowned film festival, IDFA, and her essay, 'Hegemanic America' - on immigration and interracial relationships - won the 2021 US 'Justice For' Essay Prize. Honoured in Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2023 in the Social Impact category and selected as one of TIME's 18 Black leaders working to end the racial wealth gap, Rebecca is also the CEO of the 10,000 Interns Foundation, a non-profit that champions underrepresented talent by creating paid internship opportunities. Rebecca studied Fine Art at the University of Oxford, Brasenose College. She lives in London but still calls Kenya home. These Heavy Black Bones is her first book. @raajulubushell