These Heavy Black Bones

By: Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell

Narrated by: Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell

*Listed as one of TIME's 18 Black leaders working to end the racial wealth gap*

In Kenya the pool was green and surrounded by concrete so hot it burnt the soles of her small feet. She didn’t know any different. A decade later she would be double British Champion and the first Black women ever to swim for Great Britain. But this story is not about making history.

As her body and mind are sharpened through gruelling training, press scrutiny, and the harshness of adolescence, Rebecca questions who she is swimming for, and what the onward journey to the Olympics will cost her.

A compulsive and unforgettable study of intensity, These Heavy Black Bones meditates on Blackness, identity, and the ecstasy of peak physical performance. In stunning prose, Rebecca charts her careers’s ascent, her singular love of the water, and lays bare the pressures within her swimming world.©2024 Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell (P)2024 Canongate Books Ltd

Critic reviews

"As a teenage swimmer, Ajulu-Bushell realized that being exceptional came with a cost. Struggling with the pressure she felt to succeed in a predominately white sport, she quit while training for the 2012 Olympics" (TIME)

"Speaks about the intensity of training and the pressure of often being the only Black woman poolside" (Women's Health)

To be the best

A stunning reading by the author of this memoir. Though immediately enjoyable to anyone who swims, it is a very important account of a maturing woman learning to be her own difficult self. Hats off!