'My first experience of violence was not in a boxing ring but in the street. It was a sudden, turbulent encounter which, for the first time in my somewhat charmed life, bestowed on me the role of victim. It also coincided with my beginning to learn to box - giving currency to the idea that violence, inevitably, begets violence. Who can say? I was mugged, in broad, sparkling daylight. My attackers were two young women.'
When Mischa Merz is mugged on her own doorstep, she is stunned by the contradictory emotions of aggression and elation that her successful defence arouses in her. And so the issues and dilemmas which she explores in 'Bruising' are set in motion.
Mischa Merz's experience - from throwing and receiving her first punches to competing in an Australian title fight - provide her with the gritty and often hilarious background against which to examine myths about innate female passivity, virtue and physical weakness, and notions of femininity.
Boxing opens her to new ideas about what it means to be a woman, it tests her courage as well as her physical limitations, and it bruises her physically and emotionally in ways that most women do not expect to encounter. 'Bruising' is a rite-of-passage story common among men, but new to women.
