ATOMWEIGHT
A novel

Author: Emi Sasagawa

When nineteen-year-old Aki throws her first punch, the respectable ‘good girl’ discovers she’s a fighter. But who is she trying to beat?

Good girl, good student, good daughter: Aki has always done what her loving but demanding multiracial family expects. Far from her Vancouver home, she adjusts to life in London­—studies, friends and a relationship with a wealthy but closeted Asian woman. Life is demanding, but Aki is coping until a violent incident triggers an unexpected response in the young Japanese-Latina woman. When she discovers that brutal bar-fighting relieves her stress, she begins a dangerous dual existence—obedient and accommodating by day and brawling by night.

This is a novel about the need to reconcile competing cultures, traditions and values that also explores issues of sexual identity and violence.

  • Fiction, 260pp
  • ISBN 978-1-990160-16-5 (paperback)
  • ISBN 978-1-990160-17-2 (e-book)
  • 5.5″ x 8.5″
  • Published May 2023
  • Paperback: CA $22.95 / US $18.95
  • Ebook: CA $15.95 / US $13.95

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” Mike Tyson once said. In Emi Sasagawa’s bold and searing Atomweight, we meet a young woman who makes her plans with her fists, sparring as a way to push away her doubts about her family, sexuality and relationships. Sasagawa writes like a fighter: nimble and devastating.

Kevin Chong

Atomweight is a complex coming of age story that through sharp storytelling reveals the power and pain of existing in a queer body; a body that witnesses two very different yet dominant cultures push against one another. This is where the terrifying world of fighting is faced head on. The end result is a bold and gripping tale of identity, love and a poignant exploration of self.

Chelene Knight