More Like Wrestling: A Novel [Hardcover]

Danyel Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 2003

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing . . .

More Like Wrestling is the magnificent debut novel by one of the most acclaimed music journalists of her generation. It tells the story of Pinch and Paige, two sisters coming of age in Oakland, California, in the 1980s, a time when that beautiful, crumbling city is being transformed by tectonic shifts, both literal and figurative.

The novel unfolds through the alternating narration of the two sisters: Pinch, quiet and observant, and Paige, louder and wilder but faltering under her facade. The sisters are teenage refugees from a violent home, living alone in a faded Victorian mansion where they survive by creating a closed world centered around each other and their new friends—a rowdy makeshift family of castoffs, dealers, and drama queens on the periphery of the burgeoning drug game, some looking for a way out, some looking for a way deeper in. As the sisters grow from girls into women, they are confronted with a series of surprising reversals—death, imprisonment, and, just maybe, love—that force them to come to grips with the truth about their choices, their friends, and their tangled roots.

More Like Wrestling takes readers into fresh and surprising terrain, bringing a complex set of characters to vivid life with bracing honesty and sophistication. With a journalist’s eye for detail and a poet’s ear for language, Danyel Smith has written an unforgettable tale about memory, forgiveness, and love in a world built on fault lines.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Two sisters grow up on their own in Oakland in the 1980s in this rich, idiosyncratic, impressionistic first novel. Smart, stubborn Paige and her silent little sister, Pinch, enjoy an idyllic if lopsided childhood as children of a single mother, with visits to the library, ballet lessons and Black Panther day care. But when Paige is 14 and Pinch is 12, their mother's boyfriend attacks Paige in public, and Paige persuades their mother to rent the girls their own apartment. Making house for each other, they begin to attract a circle of friends: Maynard, Donnell and LaNell, Teeara, Oscar. Through high school it is all (or mostly) innocent, just microwave dinners together and trips to Mexicali Rose for burritos. Then the boys begin to have more money-too much money. Paige's best friend, Maynard, marries an uptown girl named Jess and has a baby; Paige drops out of college and starts dating Oscar. Oscar and Maynard begin dealing drugs; then Jess is shot and killed, and Paige thinks she knows who's responsible. Fiercely independent and sharp as she has always seemed, she begins to lose her bearings and lean on Pinch, who is still quiet but surprisingly resilient. There is no stereotyping here-Smith's characters are decent human beings living in a world where selling crack can seem like a regular job, but where redemption is always possible. The novel's underlying optimism may strike readers as unrealistic at times, but the lovingly detailed evocation of Oakland ("southern negro mores and shiny liberal whiteness and slow-motion port and fifty-cent tacos") and Smith's lyrical if sometimes rocky prose make this a substantial and strikingly original debut.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Paige and Pinch are ninth- and seventh-graders who are left alone to raise themselves in a dilapidated Oakland mansion after a conflict with their mother's alcoholic boyfriend. Paige is forever frozen by a time when the abuse drove her to desperate measures. She is fearful and distrustful, always imagining disasters in order to brace herself for disappointment. Pinch is rendered essentially silent, having witnessed the abuse and the deterioration in her sister. The girls are befriended by an assortment of Oakland youths mostly left to their own devices, and they form a companionable group until the young men drift into drug use and trafficking. Violence and death follow, straining relationships and pushing Paige and Pinch to a self-discovery that will liberate them from the toxic atmosphere of Oakland. Smith's poetic writing captures the rhythm and cadence of urban life in Oakland, the fast life, the drug life, and the sometimes anchorless drift of time as these young people come of age. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (January 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400046440
• ISBN-13: 978-1400046447
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,779,812 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lyrical in motion, with hard-edged, yet REAL characters, January 30, 2003

By 

TNC Reviews (Lake Charles, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: More Like Wrestling: A Novel (Hardcover)

MORE LIKE WRESTLING is a debut novel that is stirring and lyrical, and raw and real. Its pages tell a story about all the strife that goes on in the world --alcoholism, abuse, drugs, murder, familial separation-- through the eyes of two sisters whose love for each other is so fierce, they find themselves potentially unable to grow up and out of the pain and inflictions of their pasts.

Oakland, California sets the stage for this powerful novel about Paige and Pinch, who are on shaky and volatile ground as they live with their quiet mother and her increasingly abusive boyfriend. One fateful day, a confrontation between Paige, Pinch and the boyfriend results in their mother renting Paige and Pinch an apartment to live in, alone. This surprising turn of events --moving a 12- and 14-year-old into an apartment to take care of each other, becomes the point of no return for Paige and Pinch as they find themselves meeting new people and making friends whom introduce them into the world of drugs, dealing, drinking, and death.

It is these friends and this new world of unforgiving and ruthless things that begins an unraveling of sorts for Paige and Pinch and their existences. Each will struggle to find her true essence, will try to come to grips with her past and present in order to move on to her future. Will the pair be able to break their dangerously tight love in order to escape the, at times, mean streets of Oakland, to escape their dependency on each other and their painful pasts, so that they can see better days?

Through the voices of Paige and Pinch, Danyel Smith creates a harshly beautiful portrait of real people going through real trials and tribulations. Smith's mosaic, fragmented-like writing style is poetic and lyrical, hard and abrupt, and it cannot help but to lull you into not only the stories of Paige and Pinch, but also the stories of the other characters in the story, whom Smith draws out in concrete details just as poignant and revealing as the two narrators.

I read this novel in virtually one sitting, needing to race back to it every time I put it down for a second. I felt connected to Paige and Pinch, and I felt visually entertained by Smith's lush detail of Oakland and the area. I would highly recommend MORE THAN WRESTLING to readers so they can enjoy it for themselves, and I look forward to reading Smith's future works.

Shon Bacon

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Art of Life is More Like Wrestling Than Dancing, January 14, 2003

By 

Dera R Williams (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: More Like Wrestling: A Novel (Hardcover)

In her debut novel, More Like Wrestling, Danyel Smith, former editor at Vibe and Time Magazines, emerges as a new, fresh voice that speaks for the masses.

The time span is 1980s in Oakland during the bloodiest time period of that city's history with drug wars that are being rivaled only by the present time as we go into 2003.
Beautifully crafted in first person voices of two sisters as they evolve from young teens into adulthood, this novel was sobering and poignant, at times melancholy. Paige, the oldest and Pinch, younger by two years are happily living with their mother surrounded by the familiar landmarks of San Antonio Park, Diamond Pool and Lake Merritt as their playgrounds. They are thrust into adulthood at ages fourteen and twelve when their mother's boyfriend, Seth, in a drug-infused rage, physically attacks the sisters. The girls runaway and their mother finds them and rents an apartment that she eventually leaves them in when she returns to her man. Thus the girls are more or less raising themselves among the burgeoning crack drug trade of Oakland. Pinch and Paige are like peanut butter and jelly; you see one, you see the other. Together they travel in a pack with Maynard, their long time childhood friend, Oscar, Jessica, Cedric, LaNelle, and Donnell and assorted acquaintances moving through life in a haze of 80s tunes floating in their young heads.

Pinch clearly has the strongest voice as she wrestles with how she fits in with the crowd, riding on the coattails of Paige. Silent, observant, and all knowing, at times she appears to be not a part of the adventures or misadventures of the crew, but lingering as an afterthought. The boys in this group are a mixture of basically middle-class/working class kids, who though they are college students become swept up by the glamour and allure of the drug-selling scene. Maynard, a manchild, whose parents have substance abuse problems, is forced into a role as provider, protector and eventually marriage and fatherhood. The girls, rarely voicing their fears and concerns to the guys, .... "I don't get into all his business all like that..." preferring to believe it is a temporary condition. In a constant state of denial of what their men are doing, they see only what they want. "Our boys weren't typical vengeful ghetto Negroes.... " Paige, a Cal Berkeley drop-out hooks up with Oscar, who also drops out of college to deal drugs and the two wander aimlessly into marriage. But it is not long before the fast money, flashy cars, and other expensive trappings begin to crowd in on them leading way for inevitable tragedy and life altering events. Lives are changed as friendships are tested and trusts are eroded. These are children growing up too quickly--- wanting to skip the hard part of adulthood and get right to the real living.

This reviewer found it necessary to step away many times in reading this story, some things were too close to what is going on now. The last few years have seen a series of novels showcasing the drug trade activity of Oakland and the thought of reading another rendition was somewhat daunting. But at no time did I think this was for commercial effect or gain. Instead, the raw truth was done tenderly while showing the good and bad of the area as well as the ambiance of a city that sits amidst some of the country's finest institutions of higher learning and culture.
Much of it is written in fragmented and run-together sentences, defying standard rules of English---- but Smith makes it work as she takes us into the heads, minds, and feelings of Paige and Pinch. Metaphors candidly jump off the pages weaving images of an era and place that become visible and remain lingering with readers. Oakland and surrounding areas are brought to life in her lyrical writing. Trying to pigeon hole her style, one sees glimpses of the staccato phrases of Sandra Cisneros, and the lyrical poetry of June Jordan, complex, at times convoluted, but even so this is a unique voice, one that will no doubt becoming classic and timeless to reign with the aforementioned authors.
I applaud the author for stepping out and taking a chance with her voice and thank her for the gift for which she has graced Oakland, her hometown, the Bay Area and the literary world.

Dera Williams
APOOO BookClub

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sisterly Bonds, January 15, 2003

By 

The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

This review is from: More Like Wrestling: A Novel (Hardcover)

Pinch and Paige are two sisters growing up in Oakland, California. When their mother's boyfriend becomes physically abusive, she opts to stay in the situation, however, she rents the girls their own apartment. The girls, who at the time are ages 12 and 14, find that they have to grow up fast in order to be self-sufficient. Paige takes on the role of guardian, and the two form a bond that is unbreakable.

The girls soon meet friends who love to hang out at their apartment without adult supervision. These friendships continue to grow and flourish, and follow the girls into adulthood. Once the girls become adults, their lives change in ways that they could never have imagined. Their once close-knit clique of friends begin to find themselves drifting apart as some members become involved in the lucrative, albeit dangerous, drug game. Pinch and Paige find themselves questioning everything that they once held sacred including their bond to each other.

Danyel Smith has written a wonderful, engrossing novel. The characters are well developed and have so much history with each other. The story reads smoothly and her use of flashbacks and diary entries helps the reader gain insight into past situations, helps with understanding the characters actions, and provides insight into their psyches. Her vivid descriptions made me feel as though I was in Oakland and that I personally knew all of the characters. I definitely recommend this book and eagerly anticipate future works from this author.

Reviewed by Latoya Carter-Qawiyy