A review by breezrose
Fights: One Boy's Triumph Over Violence by Joel Christian Gill

4.0

Spoiler

"Fights" is a heavy but very real read, and I appreciate that Gill didn’t sugarcoat his story. It reads as authentic and honest all the way through with his reflections on how he internalized his experiences from a young age and how he in turn externalized his pain in both healthy and unhealthy ways as he got older. The earlier chapters show how he perceived his experiences with loss, violence and hate through a child’s lens, and this perspective evolves over time. As a child, he describes children as sponges that soak up hurt, violence and indifference from around them, and when the sponge is full, these things spill out. He applied this analogy to his own actions and the observed actions of those around him who committed violence to him or others.

With a title like “Fights” there is plenty of physical fighting, but we also see the social and internal strife that Gill grapples with in his familial relationships, his friendships and with himself. His use of a picture when white people in the story use racial slurs is creative and conveys an element of his interactions with white people in the South in the late 70’s/early 80’s. He also uses flames and fire imagery to indicate anger and heightened emotional states which signifies choice points for Joel when he is hurt or provoked. This book is not written for the white gaze or comfort of white audiences; Gill’s story stands on its own to portray his relationship to fighting and how he worked to understand it and break the cycle of fighting in his own life. This certainly wasn’t an “easy” read, and I don’t think that it’s meant to be. However, it’s a valuable and typically untold or misrepresented story.

Especially for younger audiences, this would need a content warning for sexual abuse.