Tsui, Bonnie. Why We Swim. Chapel Hill, NJ: Algonquin. 2020. Print
One night over dinner, my husband tells me a story he heard about a boat in the North Atlantic and a man who should have drowned.
Description:
I've been doing a lot of swimming lately, up to a mile each day in a lake or pool. So of course I was drawn to Bonnie Tsui's Why We Swim, an engaging history of people, events, emotions, and challenges of swimming.
Water has played a significant part in human history, the element we originated in before becoming land creatures. Today, we are not natural born swimmers, but we are inexorably drawn to water.
And Tsui presents a lot of fascinating people to showcase our historic attraction to swimming and personal relationship with the water. Tsui skillfully weaves these accounts into a gentle, almost rhythmic narrative writing style that is a pleasure to read...almost like floating down a river.
She begins with the true Icelandic story of a 22-year-old fisherman who survived the sinking of his boat by swimming over 3.5 miles to safety ... in 41-degree water on a 29-degree night. How did he survive six hours in the freezing water when the other crew members quickly drowned or died within minutes from hypothermia? The survivor has become an international hero for helping scientists understand the effects and prevention of hypothermia. There is even an annual swimming event in Iceland, the Guolaugssund ("Guolaugur's Swim"). Of course, Tsui participates in this event and relates her experiences.
Do you remember Dara Torres, the 41-year-old Olympic medalist who in her fifth Olympics (a record for appearances) in Beijing in 2008, only to miss a gold medal by 1/100 of a second? Tsui interviews Torres to understand what drove her to come out of three retirements to keep swimming competitively at such a high level at her relatively advanced age.
And then there's "Coach Jay" Taylor, a cultural attache for the US Foreign Service, who taught soldiers in Baghdad to swim in Saddam Hussein's enormous palace pool. From Navy SEALS to Iranian women who had never been able to purchase a swim suit, much less enter the water, Coach Jay taught hundreds to strip down to swimsuit and goggles, making all, regardless of rank or sex, equal.
Don't forget Kim Chambers, who despite a leg-crushing accident, still swims daily in the sub-60-degree Pacific Ocean of San Francisco, sometimes going all the way to Alcatraz or the nearby shark-infested waters Farallon Islands.
I loved the stories about the Bajau in Malaysia who free-dive two hundred feet. And the Moken in Thailand who gather clams and sea cucumbers from the bottom of the ocean, helped by their ability to focus their eyes underwater (a skill Tsui shows us how we can learn!). Also, there are people today who practice the art of Nihon eiho, the Japanese military art of swimming (usually in full, 45-pound armor), that involves skills such as treading water without hands so they can shoot bows and arrows, silent swimming, and leaping straight up out of the water onto boats.
She interviews the anthropologists who study the 10,000-year-old paintings of swimmers found in a cave in the Egyptian desert. Shallow lakes once dotted this currently barren desert, and now there is newly discovered evidence of humans who lived and swam near these waters for thousands of years.
Who else does Tsui mention? Try Benjamin Franklin, Lynne Cox (distance, cold-water swimmer), Gertrude Ederle (holder of dozens of swimming world records and the first woman to swim the English Channel, breaking the men's record by two hours). There's Dr. Oliver Sacks, E.A. Poe, Thoreau, Byron, D.H. Lawrence, Melville, Jack London, Franklin Roosevelt, and even Nietzsche, all of whom used water and swimming in their lives and writings.
We are all drawn to water, whether to live near it, contemplate it, or swim in it. Tsui does a wonderful job of bringing so many elements together is a compelling narrative. An eye-opening book for anyone connected to water (i.e., all of us!)
When we peer into a lake, river, or ocean, we find that water encourages a particular kind of reverie. Perhaps its depths can enhance our consciousness even more if, instead of just looking, we get in and swim.
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
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