Fight Night

Swiv is bold and brash, though often filled with anxiety regarding the adults in her life: Mom is emotionally unstable and heavily pregnant, and Grandma needs medication and care as she ages. Swiv feels responsible for both of them, especially Grandma. She is also concerned about the fate of her unborn sibling, Gord. Swiv silently transmits advice to Gord to stay strong and count on Swiv to be present, one of many ways that she takes on adult roles despite only being nine years old.

The novel is written in Swiv’s voice, precocious and irreverent. She imitates the speech of the adults in her life, though she does not always understand their terms and phrases. While she often models herself on the women in her life—she smokes Mom’s cigarettes when Mom takes a nap—she also rejects certain behaviors. For example, she is very uncomfortable with anything related to sex or sexual expression: “[Grandma] started listing positions that were comfortable to have sex in. Stop! I said. Ho! said Grandma. Why not talk about this? I said, Because it’s not funny” (53). Swiv represents a liminal figure, caught between the preoccupations and embarrassments of a child and the responsibilities of an adult, as well as between genders: She is frequently mistaken for a boy. She herself rejects the notion that she has “a uterus” or other female reproductive parts (73). She is discomfited by Mom’s easy discussion of such things and by Grandma’s unashamed nakedness.

Swiv is prone to exaggeration, and she wants to keep a record of all that is done and said. She asks Mom and Grandma to write letters to Gord, for example, and she records Grandma’s account of Mom’s life on her phone. She is the authority figure in the book in both senses of the word: She is its author, and she takes on the parenting role for the other characters. Her letter to her absent father is, in part, an appeal to relieve her of responsibilities for which she is not ready.

Still, the novel revels in humorous incidents, and Swiv’s character burns brightly with wit and determination. As Grandma tells her, “I think you have that, Swivchen. You have a fire inside you and your job is to not let it go out” (23). As the novel develops, so does Swiv. As such, the book is also her coming-of-age story, albeit of a unique kind. Her experiences with Grandma away from home help her realize that she is just a child; she cannot be expected to bear the burdens of her entire family: “I was so happy that Mom was there. I’m serious about that. It was a true feeling. California had changed me, man” (228). She must now accept Grandma’s death and Mom’s nurturing. Just as she must grow up to care for her new younger sister, she must also learn to be a child again.