DECEMBER 2019 - AudioFile
The author’s memoir details the wanderlust that finds him moving from his native New England to Alaska, where he lands a teaching job. Jaed Coffin narrates these personal stories of his encounters. He wanders into a gym, where he finds a mentor as he takes solace in boxing. His quiet, calm narration has a steady, honest tone as he describes his upbringing, his relationship with his father, and the low-level fights that take him around Alaska. He imitates only those whose large personalities demand a change of tone, such as a boisterous promoter. The listener will hear Coffin come of age as he finds success in the ring and gains some understanding of his own life. M.B. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
"[A] lucidly written memoir . . . At its heart, Roughhouse Friday details Coffin’s hunger for a language he can call his own . . . Coffin’s triumph lies in ridding the language of his father, a language that compelled him to dwell in a house he did not recognize." —Matthew Janney, The Los Angeles Review of Books
"[A] lyrical account of [the author's] eventful initiation into the world of amateur boxing . . . In measured, lucid prose, Coffin writes of fight night scenes . . . and of the insecurity of angry young men. He finds that he is losing faith in his father’s heroic myths even as he struggles to embody them; nevertheless, it’s his father to whom he continually turns for answers up until the end. This is a powerful, wonderfully written exploration of one’s sense of manhood." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The strength of the narrative derives from Coffin’s vivid and perceptive accounts of the boxing matches and the participants, each with varying boxing abilities and their own individual scores to settle . . . A compelling story of small-town boxing in Alaska and a complex examination of masculine identities." —Kirkus
“Roughhouse Friday is as bare and intimate a rendering of masculinity, of young adulthood, of being human as I have ever read. This is a fearless and exquisite work of art.” —Lily King, author of the New York Times bestseller Euphoria
“Roughhouse Friday is one of the most convincing memoirs I have read tracking the mysterious course of an obsession—in this case, an obsession with fighting (i.e., “boxing”) against all odds of success and in the face of much risk. It’s a touching document, candid, utterly convincing in its myriad details of American manhood and in the clarity with which the young, aspiring boxer assesses his life. ” —Joyce Carol Oates
“Jaed Coffin’s gripping memoir, Roughhouse Friday, is an important addition to Asian American literature—to American literature, more properly. It is many things: a gritty memoir of bar boxing in Alaska, a clear-eyed and honest study of Asian American—and American—masculinity, a nuanced exploration of identity and violence, and an emotional narrative of family relations. He writes from a fertile perspective: the son of a Thai mother and a white GI father who left the family when he was two. His deft writing reminds me of writers like Joan Didion in his eye for incisive detail and his refusal to simplify or flinch in his examination of what is an emotionally and morally complex phenomenon: human behavior.” —Brian Ascalon Roley, author of American Son
“Underneath an enjoyable, rough-and-tumble 'boys’ search for meaning' lies a memoir with hidden depths and subtleties; an unflinching self-examination about an American Boy indelibly stamped by the complexities of his American experience: betrayal and dislocation, misunderstanding, racism, loneliness; shaded in the schizophrenic viewpoint of a first-world child with a parent from the third world. In Jaed’s quixotic journey to become heroic in his father’s gaze, his desire to be a formidable or dangerous man, he puts himself under the microscope; and we’re all the better for it, because we can all recognize ourselves on that same path. ” —Sam Sheridan, author of A Fighter's Heart
“We’ve long known that a handful of great writers can tell us about boxing: Oates, Hamill, and Mailer come to mind. But here’s a memoir by a luminous writer who understands boxing from the inside, as a boxer. Jaed Coffin’s book is an adventure and coming-of-age story but also an intimate meditation on masculinity and violence, on using the ring to sort out questions of identity, purpose, and anger. ROUGHHOUSE FRIDAY puts the fight back into growing up.” —Ted Conover, author of Coyotes and Newjack
"In measured, lucid prose, Coffin writes of fight night scenes and of the insecurity of angry young men. . .This is a powerful, wonderfully written exploration of one’s sense of manhood." —Publishers Weekly
DECEMBER 2019 - AudioFile
The author’s memoir details the wanderlust that finds him moving from his native New England to Alaska, where he lands a teaching job. Jaed Coffin narrates these personal stories of his encounters. He wanders into a gym, where he finds a mentor as he takes solace in boxing. His quiet, calm narration has a steady, honest tone as he describes his upbringing, his relationship with his father, and the low-level fights that take him around Alaska. He imitates only those whose large personalities demand a change of tone, such as a boisterous promoter. The listener will hear Coffin come of age as he finds success in the ring and gains some understanding of his own life. M.B. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
