Looking for a Fight: A Memoir by Lynn Snowden Picket
© Michelle Troutman
November 7, 2000
ISBN #: 0-385-31584-8
$23.95, hardcover
287 pages
Lynn Snowden Picket didn't fight like a woman -- according to her male boxing trainer she fought "like an animal." Picket took up the sport five years ago, before more and more women began jumping into the ring, including daughters of the greats Laila Ali and Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde.
Looking for a Fight was written like a diary without the dates. It starts with the author's first training session and proceeds through her many training rounds fighting men and her first and last public boxing match with a woman. The chapter-to-chapter accounts of her sparring rounds tend to become monotonous, but detailed descriptions of her and her opponents' jabs, her thoughts and fears, and her injuries illustrate the physical and mental toll boxing takes on boxers.
Picket's previous book Nine Lives followed her exploits working at nine jobs during one year. Why would a woman start boxing? For varied reasons, Picket decided to box "To prove how fearless I was" and to cure her feelings of vulnerability from her divorce. She carried her anger from her husband's infidelity into the ring. She told others she wanted to see what it's like to "learn how to hit people." By the time she quit, she found these notions "ludicrous and deranged."
She skillfully recounts the negative effect her boxing had on her life outside the ring: the breakup of her relationship with her boyfriend, her use of violence to fend off men, and her growing fear of the ring itself. Boxers can develop a tendency toward punching instead of thinking, attacking people outside the ring rather than solving conflicts peacefully. In a few of her attempts to show her strength, she struck a guy kicking her seat at the Golden Gloves and punched a teen standing in her path during an afternoon run. Her bruises made people think she had an abusive boyfriend or that boxing would cause her to lose her looks. Over time, her body and her attitude toward boxing changed. Her legs became more muscular, feet swelled, neck thickened, hands widened. She suffered from smashed ribs, and fear of future injuries caused her panic attacks. She saw Mike Tyson's hypnotist to remove them, somewhat humorously thinking she might become as violent as Tyson. It's not surprising that the fear of further injuries left her looking for an exit.
In the book's Afterward Picket shreds boxing's skin-deep glamour and cites studies about the dangers of countless body blows (concussions, cauliflower ear, renal masses in the kidneys, detached retinas) and the boxers who became ill for life because
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