Fight Night is a novel about family, albeit not a traditional one. Swiv has become an adult far before her time, while Mom and Grandma have endured the deaths of family members and the repression endemic to the community in which they once lived. Nevertheless, the novel is also rife with humor and resilience; its tone is more joyous than somber thanks to Swiv’s unique voice and Grandma’s irrepressible sense of humor. It is also the story of how a family damaged by tragedy manages to move on. While the novel recounts many traumatic stories—Grandma’s experience at the hands of Willit Braun, Mom’s suffering at the movie shoot in Albania, and Dad’s excessive drinking and subsequent disappearance—it ends in triumph, rebirth, and regeneration.

Swiv herself, in recording the family’s story, represents not the end of a legacy but the emergence of a new one. Neither Mom nor Grandma have inscribed their histories; it is Swiv who wants to record their experiences. She writes the book as a letter to her absent father—a distressing fact of the young girl’s life—without any knowledge of where he is or if he will ever return. This adds to Swiv’s anxiety. She feels like she must take care of Mom and Grandma, and her letter to Dad is an attempt to enlist assistance or even just be heard. There are also letters from Mom to Dad within Swiv’s long letter, as well as the letters Swiv requests that both Mom and Grandma write to Gord. The epistolary style creates a transformational space for Swiv and the family; she reveals in the letter that Mom “says letters start off as one thing and become another thing” (4-5). Similarly, family trauma is not necessarily destiny; it can be translated via the voice of another generation. Swiv’s letter works to re-envision the possibilities available to her—and, eventually, Gord.

The community in which Grandma lived, with authoritarians like Braun in charge, limited expressions of humanity, like “every act of joyous rebellion” (160), as she puts it. While Grandma emphasizes the importance of an inner fire, this kind of repression replaces “[o]ur fire with ashes, our love, our love with fear and trembling” (160). However, Grandma tells Swiv throughout the novel that the young woman has fire inside of her. As such, Swiv is the generational rebuttal to this kind of trauma. She is brash and brave, responsible but bold, and determined to create a supportive environment for her little sister rather than an oppressive one. Her anxiety will be alleviated by her growing understanding of her own agency and what it means to record history and remain strong.

She is already aware of her inheritance and what she has been tasked with representing. Her stewarding Grandma through her journey to California symbolizes the role of younger generations in healing generational trauma. When Grandma becomes anxious, Swiv is her lifeline: “On the days she gets the death calls she grabs at me when I walk past her and I know she wants affection, but I hate always having to the embodiment of life” (9). Swiv may sometimes be uncomfortable with her missive, but she knows her symbolic value. She represents a new chance for a traumatized family. She also passes this knowledge along to her newborn baby sister, Gord, whose birth—at almost the exact moment of Grandma’s death—signifies yet another iteration of regeneration. As Swiv silently telegraphs to her then-unborn sibling, “You can do this. Use your superpowers” (129). Both Swiv and Gord will grant the family continuity, a triumph after all the tragedy they have endured.

Swiv’s use of language is both precocious and occasionally unknowing; she does not always comprehend what the adults she imitates are saying. The use of italicized phrases signals that Swiv is mimicking something that either Mom or Grandma says—usually a phrase that Swiv does not entirely understand. For example, she talks about how “fate intervened” when she is saved from the trouble of hearing Mom explain death. Likewise, she writes about Grandma describing her older friends caught “in flagrante delicto” when uncomfortable about discussing sex. As she very aptly puts it, “I wasn’t sure what I was hearing” (74). Swiv, for all her attempts to be an adult, is still a child trying to find her way through the morass of language thrown at her. As much as this language assists her in navigating what the adults around her experience, it also confuses her. Language, in and of itself, is not always the key to comprehension.

In addition, the relationships between the women offer many opportunities for misunderstanding in themselves. For example, Grandma’s “secret language,” as Swiv terms it, is incomprehensible to anyone outside her enclosed circle. Later, Swiv notes that “[o]nly her dying and dead friends know her secret language” (13). This serves two purposes. On the one hand, it allows Grandma to express herself to others in her cohort without being understood by her granddaughter, the narrator (thus making herself incomprehensible to the reader, as well). On the other hand, it recognizes a community—a village of former refugees—with a language that is slowly dying as its members pass away. Grandma’s other proclivity, for repeating popular cultural phrases—“[W]e’re talking turkey” (54), for example, or when she tells her medications to “play ball!” (63)—is often indicative of immigrants who learn English via the radio, television, or other informal channels. English itself becomes an instrument both for communication and for unintelligibility: Actual meaning or truth is elided via cliché.

It is also the case that lived experience—especially traumatic or ecstatic experience—cannot always be clearly expressed via verbal description. Grandma often uses literary references, which the reader may understand but Swiv definitely does not, to illustrate particular ideas or experiences. These references help Grandma make her point, though she alludes to famous figures in a way that makes them seem familiar—the references do not threaten Swiv’s capabilities. For instance, she talks about going to school with Euripides, the ancient Greek playwright, who “was jealous of her” (46). She also mentions her “old friend Marcus” (83), as in Marcus Aurelius, the second-century Roman emperor. Thus, Grandma introduces Swiv to the thoughts of renowned ancient figures. She compares herself to Euripides to emphasize her practical nature, and she uses Aurelius to help Swiv become more comfortable with impermanence. Mom also has a penchant for books, though her preferences skew toward self-help. These references help the adults—and, to a certain extent, Swiv—process past events and current problems. They are a way for Grandma and Mom to talk about their trauma and circumstances without speaking directly to them.

The family itself experiences obstacles to communication: “Grandma is hard of hearing and Mom is hard of listening so I have to yell all day long,” Swiv says (108-09). Swiv cannot make herself be heard over all the pain and distress of her traumatized elders. Mom admits, in her letter to Gord that Swiv hides in the back of her closet, that she could not make herself write to her sister while she was alive. Because the “act of writing” is a way to ward off death (89), Mom feels guilty that Momo died by suicide. Thus, a lack of communication is not merely an indication of dysfunction; it is a matter of life and death. As Swiv puts it early in the book, “It doesn’t matter what words you use in life, it’s not gonna prevent you from suffering” (14). Language has no words to express the kind of suffering that arises from the depths of sorrow experienced when family is lost, feelings are repressed, and the inexplicable occurs.