Relative to Wind: On Sailing, Craft, and Community by Phoebe Wang

Something I think is integral to me being a librarian — a thing I do when I’m not writing over here at TMR — is finding everyone very interesting. Do you have a passion? Tell me about it. A project? No one will sit and listen more closely than me. I was primed to enjoy Relative to Wind: On Sailing, Craft and Community, Phoebe Wang’s memoir about sailing and self-discovery, and the way lessons from sailing spilled into the rest of her life, as well as navigating a space that wasn’t typically open to people of colour, and the threads of history that played into Wang’s relationship with sailing. This is a how-to-sail (if you do well in learning by reading, with no guiding pictures), a meditation on unexpected hobbies, and a toast to community. Wang’s love of sailing is infectious — truly, I’ve sailed maybe once in my life at this point, and I at least idly considered looking up yacht clubs near me to see if any of them worked in the same way Wang’s does.

This is a how-to-sail (if you do well in learning by reading, with no guiding pictures), a meditation on unexpected hobbies, and a toast to community.

With this kind of memoir, focused less on the author on the surface, and more on a specific thing they do or know, you have to be open to the reading journey, because they go in some interesting places. Wang actually references a couple of memoirs that I was reminded of while reading hers: Jessica J. Lee’s Turning: A Swimming Memoir, in particular. Wang weaves the larger story of her life through the lens of her regular sailing races, her growing attachment to the sport and the yacht club that her skipper is part of, and her final, full embrace of sailing as something as a touchstone through a good chunk of her adult life. She writes about the loss of sailing in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the crew she sailed with decided to be in each other’s bubble, so they could go sailing and reclaim a slice of themselves. Wang also uses different styles, telling her stories through more conventional narrative, but also using lists, the frame of guidelines and manuals, letters, and disrupting conventional ideas of chronology. Relative to Wind is sectioned by each piece of relevant sailing learning, rather than straightforward time in her sailing life, and that made for a more interesting narrative.

What I enjoyed most about Relative to Wind was the sense of freedom in sailing Wang describes. When the other parts of her life feel out of control or unstable, sailing is a constant she made for herself. There are some poignant, beautiful lessons in that, particularly as we’ve been living in a period that is and feels globally chaotic. This is a unique and fascinating memoir, and I’m glad I read it. You should read it too, and be open to the lessons of sailing – and life.

Phoebe Wang is a first-generation Chinese-Canadian currently based in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of the poetry collections Admission Requirements (McClelland and Stewart, 2017), shortlisted for the Gerald Lambert Memorial Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and nominated for the Trillium Book Award, and Waking Occupations (McClelland and Stewart 2022). Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Globe & Mail, The New Quarterly, Brick and The Unpublished City, shortlisted for a Toronto Book Award, and she co-edited The Unpublished City: Volume II, The Lived City. She is currently on the editorial board with Brick Books. She has been a mentor with Diaspora Dialogues and is an adjunct professor and mentor in the University of Toronto Creative Writing MA program. Wang lives and sails in Toronto, Ontario.

Publisher: Assembly Press (October 15, 2024)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 280 pages
ISBN: 9781738009824

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.

Alison Manley

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