Sport: Leah Hager Cohen didn't expect to end up fighting when she started going to Somerville Boxing Club in Massachusetts to do some research on women's boxing. That she was drawn into the ring herself is the great strength of this book, which will appeal to anyone interested in femininity, in aggression and in the way society has always tried to deny the links between both these things.
Cohen came to the club both "repulsed and entranced" by the sport. She quickly became more entranced than repulsed by both the sport and the family of disparate characters she got to know at the gym: Raphi, the small yet powerful coach; and Candi, Nikki, Sefina and Jacinta, the transient young girls for whom the gym represented a kind of sanctuary from the projects, poverty and broken homes.
To her credit she gets close enough to these young women to reach beyond their intoxicating personas and discover the reasons behind their need to fight. "In the ring," Nikki tells her at one point, "I feel safe, very safe - I feel as if I won't hurt people that much because of the rules and boundaries of boxing". As Cohen explains, while rape, assault and gun violence are routine in the neighbourhood, the safety young women such as Nikki crave is "the safety to let go, to unleash all her body's power without fear of it being too much".
The hot jealousy the author, a slight mother of three, experiences while watching the women spar or work out surprises her, given her long-held contempt for the sport. Within the saliva stained walls of the gym she is compelled to look back at her own childhood, her lifelong discomfort with her body and her control of food.
As she is drawn more and more into life at the club she begins a journey which sees her unpicking the "tiny moments of acquiescence" that make up the average girlhood and wondering at our attempts to squash or deny female aggression.
Her barely understood desire to get into the ring to spar with Raphi, and her disappointment later when she joins a boxing class at a women's health club and finds the hand wraps "are pink and kept in an attractive wicker basket", all keep us on the journey with her.
Her points about women's desire to box are so cleverly woven into the narrative that at times one forgets one is reading a non-fiction treatise on women's boxing and gets carried away by what often feels like a novel about hope, about feminine power and about the spells that can be cast by a group of empowered underprivileged young girls. You can't help falling a bit in love with Raphi the indomitable coach or the rebel spirits Nikki and Sefina, whose friendship Cohen describes as having a "gorgeous shimmer", like something out of a fairy tale. It's clear during her time there that Cohen fell a bit in love with everyone in that gym, including - and again this elevates the book beyond text-book territory - herself.
Cohen is such a good writer that even confirmed anti-boxing campaigners will be hooked by her skilled observations; protective headgear is secured on a boxer's head "like a nursemaid securing a bonnet". She comes to understand boxing in a visceral way, saying; "You cannot box without committing yourself to being awake in your body; you cannot box without committing yourself to caring. There is nothing nihilistic about boxing. It is the opposite of cool. There is no room for charade, no time for equivocation. Boxing is the graphic confession of the desire to remain present and to persevere."
This book is full of moments of tender power; even the simple act of wrapping hands with fabric in preparation for a bout or a sparring session moved this reader.
While I didn't finish the book with my mind completely made up about women's boxing, I did turn the final page with a much more open mind. The issue of women in the ring is far more complex than most commentators, including female commentators, ever allow.
With this meticulously researched and stylishly written book, Cohen has done women's boxing and women in general a great service.
Róisín Ingle is an Irish Times journalist. Her book, A Life in Progress, a collection of her Irish Times Magazine columns, has just been published by Hodder Headline
Without Apology: Girls, women and the desire to fight By Leah Hager Cohen Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp 244. £12.99
