Hard Bones

Hard Bones is a memoir about martial arts, mental illness, and political alienation. It is a fast-paced narrative that combines elements of journalism, history, and social science to give deeper context to what the author is experiencing and why she is so angry. It’s also an artifact of our collective trauma around COVID and the deep loneliness of late capitalism. Heather is an elder millennial with a chip on her shoulder. She worked, borrowed, and accepted Pell grants to be a first generation college graduate of a state school, only to be smacked back into the service industry when The Great Recession hit. Ten years later, she finds herself still underemployed, living with roommates, grieving the death of her older brother, and haunted by flashbacks of sexual assault. Exhausted and alienated, she decides to start training Muay Thai and eventually has her first amateur fight at the age of 39. Her fight journey takes her to Thailand to train in a fight camp and live as an expat just as the borders close for COVID in March 2020. While Thailand seems much safer than the US in terms of public health, the reality of Thailand being the most unequal country in the world comes into focus the more time she spends there.