Author Arshay Cooper mentioned his life and award-profitable memoir A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America’s First All-Black High School Rowing Team Wednesday evening on the inaugural RoundTable Reads occasion at Nichols Concert Hall in downtown Evanston. He additionally revealed to an almost bought-out viewers of a number of hundred rapt listeners about his plans for a second e-book.
Cooper answered questions from Michael Alter, proprietor of the Chicago Sky WNBA basketball group, who based the nonprofit City Year Chicago. They met years in the past when Cooper labored at City Year Chicago for 2 years after graduating Manley High School on Chicago’s West Side.
Alter’s first query needed to do with how Cooper first encountered rowing.
“I remember walking into the [school] lunch room, and I saw a boat,” Cooper mentioned. “I’d never seen a boat in my life.”
Behind the boat was TV footage of Olympic rowing. A crew consultant requested Cooper if he’d like to affix a group. Discouraged by the shortage of Black illustration that he noticed on the TV clip, Cooper turned down the invitation.
The subsequent day, classmates informed him that becoming a member of the group meant he’d get free pizza. “I love pizza!” Cooper mentioned to a roar of viewers laughter.
Calming the storms
In rowing, Cooper discovered rather more than free pizza. He spoke of his trials trying basketball and soccer, and feeling that neither sport was proper for him.
“Rowing was the first sport for me that reduced the trauma and calmed the storms,” Cooper mentioned.
Cooper described how his crew group confronted challenges apart from simply competitors, corresponding to referring to his teammates, a few of whom have been from neighboring gangs. Ultimately, he mentioned, what mattered most was the necessity to look out for each other in an unfamiliar atmosphere.
How he got here to jot down memoir
Years later, Cooper mentioned he was requested to talk to a gaggle of scholars in a poor part of New York City. He requested them to explain their desires.
Most had lofty objectives, like touchdown on an NBA or NFL professional sports activities group. But one boy mentioned he simply hoped to afford consuming at Chipotle. The college students laughed on the boy, however Cooper mentioned afterwards he gave the boy’s counselor $20 and requested him to verify the boy bought his Chipotle. It wasn’t simply about a meal, nonetheless.
“If you can eliminate small dreams, there’s room for bigger dreams,” Cooper mentioned, including he skilled this himself with rowing. As a teen rising up on the tough West Side, he used to dream of simply going into Downtown Chicago. When that dream was reached, his desires expanded, he mentioned.
Cooper moved from one dream to the following with a transfer to New York City, working as a chef and writing his memoir. This too, didn’t come with out its trials.
Cooper associated how eight editors rejected the manuscript, saying it wasn’t a compelling sufficient story for the reason that group by no means succeeded in profitable an enormous event.
“What they don’t understand is the way my community measures success,” Cooper mentioned. Rowing taught him to swim and gave him a connection to younger males in different neighborhoods.
“I am successful,” he pronounced to loud applause.
Post-publishing success
Cooper shared with the viewers a mess of successes since A Most Beautiful Thing was printed by Flatiron Books in 2020.
His memoir was tailored for a 2020 documentary film, narrated by the Academy Award- and Grammy-winning artist Common and produced by former NBA gamers Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade and directed by Olympic rower and filmmaker Mary Mazzio.
Today Cooper leads a nonprofit basis, The A Most Beautiful Thing Inclusion Fund, which supplies help to assist beneath-resourced rowing organizations thrive. The author urged assist for Evanston-area rowing packages, such because the ETHS rowing group and North Channel Community Rowing, striving to diversify the sport. Representatives of these teams attended the RoundTable Reads occasion.
Cooper additionally introduced plans to jot down a second e-book, which he mentioned can be printed by HarperCollins and overseen by Judith Curr, president and writer of its HarperOne Group.
“It’s emotional for me,” Cooper mentioned. “This book deal is huge.”
The night closed with e-book signings by Cooper.
