Growing up on Chicago’s West Side in the 1990s, Arshay Cooper wasn’t interested in playing basketball or football like most high schoolers his age. Instead, he escaped the violence on the streets and found his own source of “pure meditation” through a sport that was unusual and unknown in his neighborhood: crew.
In 2015, Cooper self-published a memoir called Suga Water, chronicling his experience rowing crew with teammates from rival neighborhoods and gangs on the first all-black high school rowing team in the United States. Cooper details how he and his teammates experienced racism and discrimination in the community around the boathouses the team traveled to and how they took a risk in trying a mostly all-white sport that had never seen anyone like them before—and how it ultimately transformed his life.