Bruising

Mischa Merz's book Bruising, published by Picador in 2000 has now been re-issued by Vulgar Press.

Bruising is the story of Mischa's experiences as an amateur boxer - from throwing and receiving her first punches - to competing in an Australian amateur title fight. Boxing opens her to new ideas about what it means to be a woman, it tests her courage as well as her physical limitations. It provides her with the gritty and often hilarious background against which to examine myths about feminine virtue and physical weakness.

Bruising, which was short listed for the Dobbie Award in 2001, has been updated with new material based on a trip to New York where Mischa spent time training with the women at one of the America's oldest and most famous boxing gyms.

'I like writing that explores experience in a naked way. I particularly like it when the writer uses words with the fidelity of a harp string. This is a book about a young woman with an intellectual orientation to life who takes up boxing. I can honestly say I have never read anything like it.'
Martin Flanagan
The Age

'Bruising takes us deep into the illicit realities of female anger and aggression, and then by way of the male stronghold of the boxing gym into the ring, and the small, fraught world of women's boxing. Merz makes her own body, discipline and courage her subjects of experiment as she explores the terrors and the exhilarations of the female capacity for violence with startling honesty. You can almost smell the sweat.'
Inga Clendinnen

'EVERY now and then a book comes along that invites you to shake off your dusty old prejudices, and stop thinking along dichotomous lines… it's a gripping read and a timely call to re-examine both sanctioned and unsanctioned violence.'
Sian Prior
The Age

'The work fits (more) comfortably within the stylish non-fiction popularised by writers such as Dava Sobel, Helen Garner and Janet Malcolm'
Mary Rose Liverani
The Australian