These Heavy Black Bones

*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 woman 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 career’s ascent, her singular love of the water, and lays bare the pressures within her swimming world.

Reviews of These Heavy Black Bones

What a book! Rebecca is such an absorbing writer, These Heavy Black Bones reads with the tension of a thriller and I desperately wanted her to be okay. It both illuminates the world of elite sport, the struggle and sacrifice, but is also really broadly relatable – a tribute to the writing, of course. It was a feast in every way: for the intellect and the senses, so very visceral — CATHY RENTZENBRINK Speaks about the intensity of training and the pressure of often being the only Black woman poolside * * Women's Health * * 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 * *