Writing
In 1997, Westbrook published his memoirs, Harnessing Anger: The Way of an American Fencer in which he describes turning his childhood experiences into a drive to succeed at his sport and the inception of the Peter Westbrook Foundation.
In Harnessing Anger, Westbrook tells how he came to be the first African American to win a national gold title in sabre fencing along with reaching international levels of success. Westbrook describes how as the son of an African-American father and a Japanese mother, Peter was aided by his mother alone in poverty in a Newark ghetto. Becoming a fencer at an early age gave him the confidence and the discipline to use an ancient martial art to his advantage both in swordplay and when facing the vicissitudes of daily life in the inner city.
The autobiography of this 6-time Olympian, 13-time U.S. National champion is the only book on his amazing life. Harnessing Anger tells us how Westbrook has overcome strong adversaries on and off the fencing strip.
'Harnessing Anger: The Way of an American Fencer' (1997), was nominated by the American Library Association for the Book of the Year Award.
Read more about this topic: Peter Westbrook
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“One can write out of love or hate. Hate tells one a great deal about a person. Love makes one become the person. Love, contrary to legend, is not half as blind, at least for writing purposes, as hate. Love can see the evil and not cease to be love. Hate cannot see the good and remain hate. The writer, writing out of hatred, will, thus, paint a far more partial picture than if he had written out of love.”
—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)
“Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.”
—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)