She Surf

Join the celebration of the diverse, vibrant, and engaged community of women riding and making waves around the globe. While surfing is usually seen as a male domain, women have long been nurturing their own water stories and claiming their rightful place in the world of this sport. She Surf hails the females, past and present, who are engaged in expanding the art of surfing. Through exclusive interviews and evocative imagery, the book travels from the iconic waves of Hawaii to remote locations in Morocco. Learn about the forgotten stories of Polynesian surfing princesses, pioneering wave riders from the 1960s, and the contemporary movers and shakers shaping the scene. This book is an exciting reflection on what it means to be a female surfer and what it means to be moved to action by the beauty of the sea.

Discover the untold story of African surf culture in this glorious and colorful collection of profiles, essays, photographs, and illustrations. AFROSURF is the first book to capture and celebrate the surfing culture of Africa. This unprecedented collection is compiled by Mami Wata, a Cape Town surf company that fiercely believes in the power of African surf. Mami Wata brings together its co-founder Selema Masekela and some of Africa's finest photographers, thinkers, writers, and surfers to explore the unique culture of eighteen coastal countries, from Morocco to Somalia, Mozambique, South Africa, and beyond. Packed with over fifty essays, AFROSURF features surfer and skater profiles, thought pieces, poems, photos, illustrations, ephemera, recipes, and a mini comic, all wrapped in an astounding design that captures the diversity and character of Africa. A creative force of good in their continent, Mami Wata sources and manufactures all their wares in Africa and works with communities to strengthen local economies through surf tourism. With this mission in mind, Mami Wata is donating 100% of their proceeds to support two African surf therapy organizations, Waves for Change and Surfers Not Street Children.

Cheri Hamilton, Bethany’s mom, tells the inspiring story of the Hamilton Family. Bethany Hamilton’s incredible story of surviving and thriving in the wake of a shark attack, told in her best-selling autobiography Soul Surfer, has sold more than 1.5 million copies. Yet her family’s adventures started long before Bethany lost her arm and became a pro surfer. Now Cheri Hamilton, Bethany’s mom, tells the inspiring story of the Hamilton Family. Raising a Soul Surfer invites readers to journey with the Hamiltons to the lush islands of Hawaii, to experience a worldwide news event, Bethany’s shark attack, from her parents’ point of view. Witness the many small steps of faith and how God stepped in and gave them a higher purpose.

A middle grade novel in verse about Samira, an eleven-year-old Rohingya refugee living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, who finds strength and sisterhood in a local surf club for girls. Samira thinks of her life as before and after: before the burning and violence in her village in Burma, when she and her best friend would play in the fields, and after, when her family was forced to flee. There's before the uncertain journey to Bangladesh by river, and after, when the river swallowed her nana and nani whole. And now, months after rebuilding a life in Bangladesh with her mama, baba, and brother, there's before Samira saw the Bengali surfer girls of Cox's Bazar, and after, when she decides she'll become one. Samira Surfs, written by Rukhsanna Guidroz with illustrations by Fahmida Azim, is a tender novel in verse about a young Rohingya girl's journey from isolation and persecution to sisterhood, and from fear to power.

Wave Woman is the untold story of an adventurer whose zest for life and learning kept her alive for ninety-eight years. Betty Pembroke Heldreich Winstedt was the granddaughter of Mormon pioneers who, after spending an active and athletic childhood in Salt Lake City, moved to Santa Monica with her family and enrolled at USC to study dental hygiene. Betty went on to elope with a man she hardly knew, and to have two daughters. In middle age, Betty finally followed her dream of living near the ocean; she moved to Hawaii and, at age forty-one, took up surfing. She lived and surfed at Waikiki during the golden years of the mid-1950s and was a pioneer surfer at Makaha Beach. She was competitive in early big-wave surfing championships and was among the first women to compete in Lima, Peru, where she won first place. Betty was an Olympic hopeful, a pilot, a mother, a sculptor, a jeweler, a builder, a fisherwoman, an ATV rider, and a potter who lived life her way, dealing with adversity and heartache on her own stoic terms. A love letter from a daughter to her larger-than-life mother, Wave Woman will speak to any woman searching for self-confidence, fulfillment, and happiness.

**Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography** Included in President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List “Without a doubt, the finest surf book I’ve ever read . . . ” —The New York Times Magazine Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses—off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves. Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly—he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui—is served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.

A captivating look at two centuries of surfing—"the Sport of Queens"—from Native Hawaiian royalty to the breakout style and jaw-dropping feats on the waves today. Few subjects in the world of sports and or the outdoors is more timely or compelling than women’s surfing. From smart, strong, fearless women shattering records on 80-foot waves to professional athletes fighting for equal pay and a more fair and just playing field, these amazing, wave-riding warriors provide an inspirational and aspirational cast of powerful role models for women (and men) across all backgrounds and generations. Over the past two-hundred years, and especially the past five decades, the surfing lifestyle have become the envy of people around the world. The perception of sun, sand, surf, strong young women and their inimitable style, has created a booming lifestyle and sports industry—and the sport that is set to make it’s Olympic exhibition debut in Tokyo 2021. A massive shift from when colonizers tried to extinguish all traces of Native Hawaiian surfing and its sacred culture. What is it about the surfing that intrigues people of all ages, from all corners of the world? The beaches and idyllic locations? The unique style and mystique that surfers project? These women, on the beach and riding giant waves, or in the media, have made their mark on not just their sport, but our wider culture. Women on Waves is filled with phenomenal athletic performance, breakthrough female achievements, and plenty of inspiration and fun to see us through until the time when we can all hit the surf once more! Spanning a millennia, From Hawaii to Malibu, New York to Australia, South Africa to the South Pacific and beyond, Jim Kempton presents a fascinating new narrative that will captivate anyone who loves sports and the outdoors.