History of Surfing informative speech

General Discussion
1

My girlfriend has an informative speech as an assignment for her public speaking class. She chose surf history as a topic but I don’t have a lot of books (1 total) on the topic. I want her to give the correct representation of our culture but I don’t really know how since I’m well… a part of it. I can give her insight and direction but when it comes to history I admittedly know very little aside from what books tell. We were thinking of starting the speech with a poem in hawai’ian (translation afterwards) but haven’t found any yet. Can anyone recommend some excellent books or a great poem? Thanks in advance.

2

Hey Starstryke,

You might check out these sites.

http://www.legendarysurfers.com/blog/blogger.html

http://www.surfhistory.com/html/culture/index.shtml

Of course, there’s always the library. If money’s no object, you’ll find tons of books on Amazon.

Good luck

3

thanks for the direction. I found surfart.com has a lot on it too, now to just find that perfect poem.

4

Not Hawaiian, but John MASEFIELD’s “Sea Fever” is one of my all-time favorites:

"…I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying…"

5

Go to www.surfart.com and hit the surf history link. Pretty good stuff there. Also, I’m of the opinion you can’t separate surfing from it Hawaiian roots and so I’d recommend a little background in Hawaiian history. Maybe read James Michener’s book “Hawaii.”