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Bonnie Tsui

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Bonnie Tsui

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Born
New York, The United States
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October 2008

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Bonnie Tsui is a longtime contributor to The New York Times and the bestselling author of Why We Swim, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Time magazine and NPR Best Book of the Year; it has been translated into ten languages and was a Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist in Science. Bonnie is also the author of American Chinatown, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and Sarah and the Big Wave, a children’s book about the first woman to surf Mavericks and a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection. She is a consultant for the Hulu television series Interior Chinatown. Her new book, On Muscle, will be published in April 2025. Her work has been recognized and supported by Harvard University, the National ...more

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Bonnie Tsui Hi Marc! You're right that many monkeys can swim. It's the larger primates who seem to need to be taught -- a.k.a. the great apes, which include orang…moreHi Marc! You're right that many monkeys can swim. It's the larger primates who seem to need to be taught -- a.k.a. the great apes, which include orangutans, chimps, and humans.(less)
Bonnie Tsui Well, survival first of all! That's the most basic reason, of course, and I talk to scientists and follow traces of our human evolutionary past to tal…moreWell, survival first of all! That's the most basic reason, of course, and I talk to scientists and follow traces of our human evolutionary past to talk about this in the book. But after we learn to survive the water, swimming can become something else: a way to well-being, and health; a path to find community, through a team or club; an avenue to competition, which, if you think about it, is really our fight-or-flight survival instincts subsumed in a race setting. And swimming itself can be a window to flow, in all the ways we talk about that state of being: physical, psychological, emotional. The book is structured thematically, by all these different ways we can answer that question.(less)
Average rating: 3.92 · 12,174 ratings · 1,861 reviews · 12 distinct worksSimilar authors
Why We Swim

3.95 avg rating — 10,464 ratings — published 2020 — 29 editions
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Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journ...

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4.27 avg rating — 3,306 ratings — published 1999 — 27 editions
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On Muscle: The Stuff That M...

3.83 avg rating — 622 ratings8 editions
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The End of the Golden Gate:...

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3.82 avg rating — 555 ratings3 editions
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American Chinatown: A Peopl...

3.62 avg rating — 229 ratings — published 2009 — 8 editions
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Sarah and the Big Wave: The...

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3.90 avg rating — 209 ratings — published 2021 — 2 editions
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She Went to the Field: Wome...

3.70 avg rating — 88 ratings — published 2003 — 9 editions
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A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of ...

3.48 avg rating — 81 ratings — published 2007
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This Is Life: 10 Writers on...

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3.19 avg rating — 73 ratings — published 2022 — 3 editions
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The Uncertain Sea

3.82 avg rating — 11 ratings
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“You don’t have to be a great swimmer to appreciate the benefits of sensory solitude and the equilibrium the water can bring.”
Bonnie Tsui, Why We Swim

“For many swimmers, the act of swimming is a tonic, in that old-fashioned sense of the word: it is a restorative, a stimulant, undertaken for a feeling of vigor and well-being. The word tonic comes from the Greek tonikos, “of or for stretching.” About a dozen people”
Bonnie Tsui, Why We Swim

“Buoyancy, floating, weightlessness. Freedom. These are the words we use to talk about swimming. Is it a coincidence that this is also the language we use to talk about the lightness of being, the wellness of being, that we strive for in this corporeal world?”
Bonnie Tsui, Why We Swim

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