A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America's First All-Black High School Rowing Team

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapter 13-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Role of Education and Personal Growth in Overcoming Adversity

One of the overarching themes running throughout A Most Beautiful Thing is the role of education and personal growth in overcoming adversity. Author Arshay Cooper’s narrative takes place on Chicago’s West Side in the late 1990s, where virtually every child is born into adversity because of rampant drug abuse, gang violence, and poverty. In Chapter 1, Cooper explains, “At fourteen years old in my neighborhood, kids had experienced what most soldiers witnessed in war. At fifteen, I had already run for my life, had bullets fly straight past my head, skipped over pools of blood, and witnessed dead bodies on the street” (1). Additionally, because of his mother’s addiction to drugs when he was younger and the childhood that he missed out on, he argues that “bitterness was stamped on the tablet of [his] heart” (2). Later in the book, after he meets a woman who knows his father, Cooper explains that he never knew his father and had only met him once. The adversity that Cooper has faced throughout his life was not uncommon for kids on the West Side, but his ability to continue to grow and take advantage of opportunities is unique.

For Cooper, adversity has become normalized, but education, personal growth, and, most importantly, rowing allow him to overcome that adversity. When the team travels to Philadelphia for spring break, they spend time every day on the campus at the University of Pennsylvania, and it has a profound effect on Cooper. He admits that he has fallen in love with college and thinks to himself that “this rowing thing might very well work out” (77). He clearly catches on to the idea that his involvement in rowing can be a ticket to a different life. This theme is also illustrated in Chapter 12, when Cooper discusses his reaction to seeing some former Manley basketball stars on the streets before school. He notes that they look awful and that “the players that aren’t good enough to get scholarships seem to fall apart quickly” (157-58). According to Cooper, “When you work extra hard through high school and earn every grade, it’s easier to resist the nonsense of the streets” (158). He also adds that he feels like the coaches “develop them too much as athletes and not as good human beings. It’s almost as if their existence is about basketball skills and not life skills” (158).

The Importance of Diversity and Representation in Sports

Another theme running throughout A Most Beautiful Thing is the importance of diversity and representation in sports. In Chapter 2, when Cooper discusses the initial meeting for the rowing team, he looks around the room and notes that “[t]hese are the sons of drug addicts, prostitutes, gang members, and drug dealers. The people that we will race are possibly sons of lawyers, doctors, professors, and salesmen” (26). Earlier in the meeting, Alpart tells the group bluntly that rowing “is a very white sport” (25). He tells them that it is one of the hardest sports around and the oldest Olympic sport, but there are no all-African American public high school teams. Alpart believes the diversity that Manley and other African American crew teams will bring is important to rowing because that diversity will lead new kids to the sport, and he believes rowing is important for the kids because it will open the door to another sport and other opportunities.

The historic nature of what the Manley team is accomplishing is reinforced by Eugene, the dockmaster at the Lincoln Park Lagoon, following their disastrous debut race in the Chicago Sprints. He finds Cooper sulking in the locker room after the race and explains to him that Cooper should see the positive in what the Manley team has done. He tells Cooper that in 10 years, no one will remember the team that won, but people will remember the Manley team. Eugene adds, “In no suburb, no inner city, I mean, nowhere in America have I heard of a black public-school team like Manley in a boat to race on a crew team” (120). Cooper alludes to this historic aspect again in the final chapter when he writes, “As the captain, my vision is for the guys to know that we’re not just a team, we’re a movement. As the first black men in this position, we can make history and be heroes” (211).

Another reason why diversity and representation in sports is important is to help get rid of the categories of “Black sports” and “white sports.” In Chapter 4, when Grace asks Cooper about the rowing team, he explains to her that he thinks rowing is a white sport because Black sports “are ones that are cheap to play” while white sports “cost a lot and require boats, ergs, or horses” (39). In the book’s final chapter, when the team is racing in Michigan, Cooper discusses how the team has mixed emotions about always being the only Black people there: “Some of the guys are focused and don’t get bothered anymore; the others say it still bothers them because there should be more of us here racing” (217).

The Transformative Power of Sports

The transformative power of sports is another theme found throughout A Most Beautiful Thing. When Cooper discusses his mother’s transformation from being a neglectful mother who is addicted to drugs into a caring and nurturing one, he explains that the Victory Outreach Christian Recovery Home and a “spiritual relationship with God” changed her (7). However, it is the transformative power of sports, and specifically the sport of rowing, that changes the lives of Cooper and his teammates. At one of the team’s first practices, Cooper points out that when he watches the news, he sees “kids that are dying, going to jail, and not receiving a good education. Those kids are us in this room” (43). He argues, “It takes a village to raise a child, and our village is gang members, drug dealers, drug addicts, and prostitutes. It’s easy to become a product of this, but I feel like the coaches are using rowing to get us into college and to change our village” (44).

Perhaps the most important way in which crew transforms the lives of Cooper and his teammates is that it takes them away from their former lifestyles and introduces them to new opportunities and new experiences. In Chapter 10, Cooper explains that he is not sure if Alpart understands the impact that he is having on them, in terms of bringing guys together who are all connected to rival gangs. He writes, “You have Malcolm, who rolls with the Gangsters Disciples gang, Alvin with S.O.A., and Preston with Conservative Vice Lords, and we are all coming together in one boat, as a team” (129). Through Alpart, all the teammates get summer jobs and the opportunity to travel and experience things that would not be possible otherwise. In the book’s final chapter, Cooper discusses the feeling he had when a private school team approached him to introduce themselves. He notes, “I didn’t think we could get along with people who didn’t look like us but rowing changed that for me. Crew changed our mindset, lifestyle, work ethic, and, as Elliott says, ‘our bodies.’ This experience was never just about rowing. It was about bridging the water” (215-16).