These Heavy Black Bones, Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell, book review: ‘Gut-wrenching account of a person with a mixed ethnic background in a very white sport’

The book’s cover

Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell was at star swimmer from an early age. Achieving top rank globally for breaststroke at just 15, she was the first Black woman to swim for Great Britain.

But behind the headline achievements lies the psychological toll of high-performance sport.  These Heavy Black Bones is the local author’s engrossing story of how she shot to fame but ultimately decided to walk away from the sport.

Born in Warrington to academic parents – an English mother and a Kenyan father – she spent the first years of her life shuttling between countries, including the UK, Kenya and South Africa. She latched on to swimming as a girl and her talent was quickly spotted, earning her a place at a specialist boarding school in Plymouth.

It was during her teenage years that Ajulu-Bushell’s career took off, only for her to face the brutal consequences of being objectified into a commodity and pushed by people for their own ends.

Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell

The finely-crafted account in these pages offers a fascinating insight into the world of swimming, but the book’s real pull its gut-wrenching description of the emotional strain of being a person with a mixed ethnic background in a very white sport.

At her peak moments Ajulu-Bushell was able to turn her difference to her advantage and use it to build a myth of exceptionalism around herself. She recalls how “I took a razor to the inside of my head, cutting away at my insecurities with long, clean strokes”. But as she rose to international prominence, relentless press commentary on her origins and allegiances became an intolerable burden.

Even for those with limited interest in sport, this is a volume well worth reading for its original angle on ethnicity, excellence and learning to see oneself anew.

These Heavy Black Bones by Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell is published by Canongate; ISBN: 978 1 80530 0441; RRP: £18.99.