I think the book with the largest gap between its popularity and impact on me is Kung Fu High School by Ryan Gattis. It came out in 2005, which is probably when I read it, and I don't think I've ever heard a single person mention it.
The premise of the novel is that there's an inner city school filled with violent gangs who all know a lot of martial arts and a drug kingpin who's running things. Our protagonist is Jen, a high school girl, who is part of one of those gangs. The novel starts her cousin Jimmy coming to school. Jimmy has come to Kung Fu High School from Hong Kong, where he went to the most prestigious martial arts academy there is. His record there was 2,412 wins and zero losses. No one has been able to touch him for a very long time. He's a kung fu god. He's also promised his mother that he won't fight anymore.
Look, I'm not sure that I actually recommend this book, but it had an impact on me, so I guess I'll say that spoilers follow, and if you really want to, you can track down a paperback of it. I'd say that most of the book is bloody violence, and it's been a hot minute since I've read it, but there are things that stuck with me.
Spoilers follow.
Jimmy doesn't fight. He gets his shit kicked in. The specter of his ultimate dominance as a kung fu master hangs over the opening the book. He has the power to solve every problem, if only he would fight, which he refuses to do, and he's not doing this in the way some technical pacifists do where he's dodging every shot or expertly blocking, he's just ... getting beaten.
Supposedly he's doing this because he put four guys in the hospital and made a promise to his mom. But at a certain point, as the legend of Jimmy Chang is told, there's a touch of the supernatural: there was a match, one of his last, where Jimmy wasn't going on the offensive, he just seemed bored with the whole thing, and he got pushed further and further until he was almost out of the ring. And then he got pushed again and started to fall, but a moment later he was behind the guy pushing him. It's on video, and happens between frames, faster than a person can actually move.
And while Jimmy tells people he promised his mother he wouldn't fight, we eventually get this scene, toward the end, where he confesses that this wasn't actually it: what happened was, he teleported, and didn't how or why it happened, he was just That Good at kung fu, transcendent. And he didn't know whether it would happen again, or whether he would come back from it.
And this is one of the ideas that I keep thinking about. The novel is, in some ways, a very extended period of Jimmy's refusal of the call. He's the best there ever was, impossibly good at kung fu, but it's strange and scary to be at the top, so he decides he's going to duck out on his fate. He's a coward, of sorts.
I have no idea what the novel was trying to say with this. I have never spoken to another person who has read the novel. But I thought it was such an interesting direction to take this setup, to have this explicitly supernatural skill that ends up casting a shadow.
(Also the book has this thread of romance between Jen and Jimmy, who are first cousins, and ... you know, it's weird. I think a proper analysis of this book would dive into the transgressive nature of this relationship and how it relates to these characters. I guess instead I'm just throwing it out there as a thing that happens.)
,, Senki sem hitte volna, de ez az eszement világ. Kicseszik veled, ahol csak tud, akár kész avgy rá, akár nem, és időnként elvesz olyasmit is, amit nagyon nem kéne. Van úgy, hogy csak erre számíthatsz tőle - hogy elvesz."
I have so many ebooks on my Kindle that I’ve had to resort to a lottery system to select my books. There are so many that I’ve bought when they went to $1.99 on Amazon and I just add them to my Kindle and then never read them. I’m trying to clear all these books out. So, I literally draw numbers to select my next book. My only rule is that if I select a book that is the middle of a series, I go to the first book instead. So far, that hasn’t happened. But I’m sure it will at some point, given the number of series I have.
So, when the lottery selected All Involved, my first thought was “oh, yay!” because I’ve heard some great things about this one. Written from multiple perspectives, told in the days following the Rodney King LA Riots, the reader sees events unfolding from a variety races. The stories are mostly told from Mexican gang members, but there are some Koreans who are simply trying to protect their property, a nurse in a hospital treating victims, a fireman trying to keep the city from burning down, and some people trying to keep their heads above the water of crime.
The best part about this book is when one person dies (spoilers, but really, it’s pretty clear this will happen considering the people “All Involved” in the gangs) the next perspective picks up with the friend of the victim or even the killer. You never lose the path of the narrative, even after death. I don’t know much about the author, Ryan Gattis, but he crafted an excellent book that felt very in the moment of the few days it covers. I really enjoyed this book. The race relations presented are still a part of our society today, so it has a double impact on the reader.
"LA is the most diverse city in America, the globe in a small space. I found it amazing that I could drive 15 minutes and only hear Mandarin, or Urdu, or Armenian. I love the openness to new cultures and ideas, and the collaborations you see everywhere – the diversity leads to amazing authentic cultural mashups. You can really see the hybrid culture in the food scene. You get incredible food combinations you won’t find elsewhere – the Korean taco, for instance, was created in LA."
Lionsgate has acquired the movie rights to the relevant YA novel AIR by Ryan Gattis with Elgin James to direct. Ryan Gattis‘ social issues young adult book Air has been acquired by Lionsgate for a theatrical release. The book weighs heavily on social activism as we follow a young man...
Minhas memórias são os únicos lugares onde vou rever qualquer uma dessas coisas, e eu me pergunto se é isso que os escritores devem fazer, reconstruir lugares em suas mentes - lugares que há muito tempo não existem mais, lugares que desaparecem, e eu me pergunto: se isso for verdade, se aplica também a pessoas que desapareceram?
When 17-year-old Grey witnesses the tragic death of his mother in Colorado, he is shipped off to live with his aunt in inner-city Baltimore. Grey struggles to fit in to his new school and environment until his new friend, Akil, introduces him to the enigmatic Kurtis, the leader of a group that uses high-octane sports as a form of social activism. By challenging the police with death-defying stunts and then posting videos of them online, Kurtis, Grey, and their group become unlikely heroes in the fight against the prejudice that surrounds them.
As Kurtis takes Grey under his wing, they come up with a name, an insignia and attract more and more followers to their extreme acts. The lines between social activism and criminal behavior blur and their escalating stunts become a rallying point for the underprivileged and disenfranchised around the country, spreading like wildfire across the Internet. How far will Grey and Kurtis go to push their message, and can their fragile alliance withstand their growing power?
