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A review by emmkayt
Tough Girl: Lessons in Courage and Heart from Olympic Gold to the Camino de Santiago by Carolyn Wood
4.0
I really enjoyed this thoughtful, well-written memoir. Carolyn Wood was a champion swimmer in her youth in the 1950s, leading up to a trip to the 1960 Rome Olympics. She writes engagingly about her training experiences, as well as her developing sense of self as a young person. Interspersed amongst those chapters is her more recent experience walking the Camino de Santiago alone, a journey undertaken in retirement after her wife leaves their relationship. She’s never preachy or facile, but there’s a lot in there about how to live, how to persist and keep going, how to let go.
It was also very interesting reading about her time as a young swimmer. For example, it was back before women’s sports in the US were required to be funded equally at the College level, so the expectation was that a girl’s competitive career ended after high school. One Olympics and done was the aspiration, for the most part. Wood was a sassy kid with a penchant for pranks - as she was growing up in Portland, it made me think of Beverly Cleary, and perhaps a slightly more potty-mouthed Ramona. She was also growing up as a young lesbian amidst all the gender structures of the 1950s. Even in the 1970s, she lost custody of her young son due to her sexual orientation, though she and her wife maintained a meaningful, enriching relationship. Overall, a really good read.
It was also very interesting reading about her time as a young swimmer. For example, it was back before women’s sports in the US were required to be funded equally at the College level, so the expectation was that a girl’s competitive career ended after high school. One Olympics and done was the aspiration, for the most part. Wood was a sassy kid with a penchant for pranks - as she was growing up in Portland, it made me think of Beverly Cleary, and perhaps a slightly more potty-mouthed Ramona. She was also growing up as a young lesbian amidst all the gender structures of the 1950s. Even in the 1970s, she lost custody of her young son due to her sexual orientation, though she and her wife maintained a meaningful, enriching relationship. Overall, a really good read.