Roughhouse Friday: A Memoir
By Jaed Coffin
4.5/5
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About this ebook
A beautifully crafted memoir about fathers and sons, masculinity, and the lengths we sometimes go to in order to confront our past
"[A] lucidly written memoir . . . 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
While lifting weights in the Seldon Jackson College gymnasium on a rainy autumn night, Jaed Coffin heard the distinctive whacking sound of sparring boxers down the hall. A year out of college, he had been biding his time as a tutor at a local high school in Sitka, Alaska, without any particular life plan. That evening, Coffin joined a ragtag boxing club. For the first time, he felt like he fit in.
Coffin washed up in Alaska after a forty-day solo kayaking journey. Born to an American father and a Thai mother who had met during the Vietnam War, Coffin never felt particularly comfortable growing up in his rural Vermont town. Following his parents’ prickly divorce and a childhood spent drifting between his father’s new white family and his mother’s Thai roots, Coffin didn’t know who he was, much less what path his life should follow. His father’s notions about what it meant to be a man—formed by King Arthur legends and calcified in the military—did nothing to help. After college, he took to the road, working odd jobs and sleeping in his car before heading north.
Despite feeling initially terrified, Coffin learns to fight. His coach, Victor “the Savage,” invites him to participate in the monthly Roughhouse Friday competition, where men contend for the title of best boxer in southeast Alaska. With every successive match, Coffin realizes that he isn’t just fighting for the championship belt; he is also learning to confront the anger he feels about a past he never knew how to make sense of.
Deeply honest and vulnerable, Roughhouse Friday is a meditation on violence and abandonment, masculinity, and our inescapable longing for love. It suggests that sometimes the truth of what’s inside you comes only if you push yourself to the extreme.
Jaed Coffin
Jaed Coffin is the author of the memoir A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants and teaches in the University of New Hampshire’s MFA creative writing program. He lives in Brunswick, New Hampshire.
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Reviews for Roughhouse Friday
3 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An interesting memoir of a man who found a way to deal with the collected pain of a difficult family situation by finding release for the violence bubbling inside of him.Jaed, after a kayak trip takes him to Alaska, fights and finds a coach who invites him to partake in coordinated barroom boxing events known as Roughhouse Friday. From there, the book more often describes the series of fights he has with other boxers throughout the area, and shows how important to the lives of these men, as well as himself, boxing truly became. You may well have heard the phrase “for love of the sport.” Truly, that love is demonstrated in this title, as Jaed shows how much more goes into fighting then simply two guys throwing punches.If you enjoy sports, (especially if you are a boxing fan), there is a lot to like and enjoy here in this memoir. Jaed is very adapt at setting the scene and making you feel like you are watching these fights as they happen. But more importantly, he also has some great ideas and insights around masculinity, being a man, and what all that really means. Overall a rather interesting journey into a unique life story.(I received an ARC of this title through a Goodreads Giveaway.)