Renee

“Swimming has always been a means of escape: physical, spiritual, mental. And if that’s true, then what better place is there for a swim team than a war zone?”
― Bonnie Tsui, Why We Swim

“Black children drown at a rate five times that of white children. And as with so many other things, money also has a heavy hand in the way swimmers are made: in the United States, nearly 80 percent of children in families with a household income of less than fifty thousand dollars have no or low swimming ability.”
― Bonnie Tsui, Why We Swim

“When it comes to swimming, the competition part has always unnerved me. I don’t like it all that much, and I still can’t quite make sense of it, so I admit it’s hard to write about. Thinking about racing makes me feel queasy. Even when I was a kid, contemplating a race would send me to the bathroom more than once during a single meet, my intestines in revolt. Fight or flight! I liked winning, and I liked swimming fast, but I couldn’t figure out how to control all the other stuff that went along with getting your body into the revved-up state required to slay your rivals.”
― Bonnie Tsui, Why We Swim

“Though class lines had been erased at the pool, race lines hardened even further, resulting in riots and racial segregation.”
― Bonnie Tsui, Why We Swim