Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa (Epub)

Description

Grief-stricken after his mother’s death and three years of wandering the world, Victor is longing for a family and a sense of purpose. He believes he’s found both when he returns home to Seattle only to be swept up in a massive protest. With young, biracial Victor on one side of the barricades and his estranged father — the white chief of police — on the opposite, the day descends into chaos, capturing in its confusion the activists, police, bystanders, and citizens from all around the world who’d arrived that day brimming with hope. By the day’s end, they have all committed acts they never thought possible.

As heartbreaking as it is pulse-pounding, Yapa’s virtuosic debut asks profound questions about the power of empathy in our hyper-connected modern world, and the limits of compassion, all while exploring how far we must go for family, for justice, and for love.

User’s Reviews

Amazon.com Review An Amazon Best Book of January 2016: Coursing with energy, Sunil Yapa’s Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is a rocket ship of a book, filled with heroics, violence and the propulsive action of a heart. Over the course of a day, Yapa spools a narrative of the now infamous World Trade Organization protests that took place along the streets of Seattle in 1990–a day that started peacefully and ended in blood. Yapa’s world introduces you to a kaleidoscope of characters and each is raw, real, driven by their own obligation and role in the protests—from the Chief of Police whose city it is to protect, to an ardent non-violent activist, to a delegate making his way to an important meeting in the hopes of transforming his country. This epic day unravels from every vantage point, and the result is a story empowered with exacting empathy. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is vivid, visceral, sly, and charged with action. You will race through it with a beating heart. –Al Woodworth –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Review “A fantastic debut novel…. What is so enthralling about this novel is its syncopated riff of empathy as the perspective jumps around these participants–some peaceful, some violent, some determined, some incredulous… Yapa creates a fluid sense of the riot as it washes over the city. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist ultimately does for WTO protests what Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night did for the 1967 March on the Pentagon, gathering that confrontation in competing visions of what happened and what it meant.”–Ron Charles, Washington Post”A symphony of a novel. Sunil Yapa inhabits the skins of characters vastly different to himself: a riot cop in Seattle, a punk activist, a disillusioned world traveler and a high-level diplomat, among others. Through it all Yapa showcases a raw and rare talent. This is a protest novel which finds, at its core, a deep and abiding regard for the music of what happens. In the contemporary tradition of Aleksandar Hemon and Phillipp Meyer, with echoes of Michael Ondaatje and Arundhati Roy, Yapa strives forward with a literary molotov cocktail to light up the dark.”–Colum McCann, author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin―-“Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is visceral, horrifying, and often heroic. But above all, this book is a full-throated chorus of voices on all sides–protestors, cops, delegates, politicians, and ramblers–as democracy runs headlong into the machinery of global power. Sunil Yapa has achieved something special, a story that is as tragic as it is relevant, as unflinching as it is humane.”―Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek”Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is a stunningly orchestrated, symphonic work of narrative power. This novel marshals all the vital forces of our existence–from the domestic to the political–and offers them to the reader with equal doses of compassion and beauty.”―Dinaw Mengestu, author of All Our Names”There is nothing to say about Sunil Yapa’s debut novel that its wonderful title doesn’t already promise–its heart beats and bleeds on every page, in prose so raw it feels built of muscle and tissue and sinew and sweat. This book is delightfully, forcefully alive, and I feel more alive for having read it.”―Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints”An open-armed love letter to humanity, this glorious novel loops around a burning center encompassing the warmth of parents and the coolness of patriarchy. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist will compel you to look and then to witness. ‘We are mad with hope’ the narrator says early on, and by the end the reader is too.”―Tiphanie Yanique, author of Land of Love and Drowning”Sunil Yapa’s debut novel is possibly the most gorgeous book I’ve read in my entire life… Yapa’s pattern of meandering, artful, full-bodied imagery, punctuated by zingy one-liners makes for a seriously addictive read… It’s painful. It’s gorgeous. I can’t say this enough: read it.”―Bustle Magazine”A vital, powerful read, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is an absorbing, multi-faceted, acutely hopeful novel.”―Patrick deWitt, author of Undermajordomo Minor and The Sisters Brothers”A great wrenching beautiful book.”―Laline Paull, author of The Bees”Chilling…A memorable, pulse-pounding literary experience.”―Publishers Weekly”[A] gripping debut…Yapa is a skilled storyteller, revealing just enough about his characters and the direction of his plot to engage his readers, yet effectively building dramatic impact by withholding certain key details. In the style of Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, Yapa ties together seemingly disparate characters and narratives through a charged moment in history, showing how it still affects us all in different ways.”―Booklist –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ THE HEART IS A MUSCLE THE SIZE OF A FIST, Sunil Yapa’s debut novel, roars with energy and is a yawping celebration of language. The story takes place during a single day at the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. The main character, Victor, is a bright, itinerant, bi-racial 19-year-old who left his Seattle home at age 16 after his mother died. He has traveled the world and seen the best and worst of what it contains. Now he finds himself back in Seattle—where his father happens to be chief of police—in the midst of the WTO protest. Through the eyes of several characters—protesters and police alike, and most notably Victor and his father—we are taken through the events of a day as the protest devolves into chaos and violence. What do we owe one another as individuals and nations, the story asks. How do we live a just life? The book reads like a glorious, if somewhat repetitive, rant, full of love and despair for the human condition. Yapa’s embrace of humanity reminds me of Walt Whitman, his deployment of language is reminiscent of the work of Colum McCann, Yapa’s teacher. I look forward to his next novel.

⭐ This book was like a slow simmering pot… taking its time building and simmering the whole time you know it’s going to boil over and all hell is going to break loose and it’s going to rip you heart out.Such a beautiful story about human nature and human experience. Each of the 7 people who’s perspectives we get have something to lose in this story. And I really felt all of the perspectives help to really wrap me up in the experience of the story and of the protest.I did my thesis in college on the media’s coverage of protests, and it the WTO protests were a large part of my research. And it was interesting to see what I found in my research, mirrored in this book. To see the author use what the media highlighted verses what they did not to underline his point. You spend the whole book feeling something for every one of these characters and then you’re struck with the knowledge that in the real life events of that day so many people were sitting by seeing it through the lens of the media machine and losing the stories of the protestors, or the cops, of the delegates.Bottomline: This was beautiful, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and has left me with so much to think about.

⭐ I wanted desperately to like this novel. Unfortunately, I could never get my bearings. The multi-person narrator mixed with the back-and-forth time jumping made the story disorienting and disjointed. I appreciate the value of each story that was told, but the author’s attempt to weave them all together left me frustrated and dissatisfied. I believe the author has talent, but I regret that I didn’t enjoy his debut work. I do, however, look forward to his future works when his voice is more refined and focused.

⭐ This is a powerful, hard-hitting novel centered around the 1999 WTO riot. Having lived through the historical event, I discovered that I really hadn’t understood what it was all about. I remember seeing images on tv, showing people demonstrating and stopping the WTO from holding their meetings, and seeing police attacking the demonstrators. This multi-character novel takes you deeply into all angles of the demonstrations … Victor a 19-year old kid who had left home at 16, who instead of selling his bag of weed to the protestors, finds himself in the front row of a group practicing nonviolent demonstration by linking themselves together in an intersection; Bishop, chief of police, widower, stepfather to Victor, a flawed man who runs the gamut from loving father, practical police officer, brutal and violent lawman; Dr. Charles Wickramsinghe, a delegate for Sri Lanka who is trying to gain admittance to the WTO for his county, only to find himself in the midst of protestors who attack him by mistake, abused and arrested by the police, and who becomes an observer and listener to why the protestors are there; and King, a young activist who is there in the role of medic to aid protestors as they are bombarded by smoke grenades, pepper spray and rubber bullets.Slow to start, at first the writing seemed slightly overwrought, but suddenly it caught hold of me, and I couldn’t put it down. The author shows humanity at it most beautiful and ugliest, but ultimately I was left with the idea that it is far better to care too much than to carelessly go through life not paying attention to the complex web of connections that bind all humanity together. As Chief Bishop says to his son, “Care too much and the world will kill you cold,” but care too little and kill your soul.

⭐ This book was tough to read in the middle of the Trump years of violence against one another. Tear gassing Americans for photo-ops, police killing minorities nightly on the news, and a mob trying to invade the capital and murder our elected politicians.It gives you the feeling of being in the middle of these armed conflicts between military and civilians. There is physical and emotional scars on both sides of the conflict and the puppet-masters are comfortably shouting directions from afar during the slaughter.Powerful. Thanks

⭐ This is the story of several individuals set against the background of the WTO protest which took place in Seattle. You see the protest through the eyes of protesters, delegates and police. The novel does a terrific job of giving the reader a true feel of the protest and the individuals involved. Very well written and true to the historical event.

⭐ This year I’ve decided to read one brand new novel every month through the year and I was lucky enough to pick Sunil Yapa’s debut novel as my january novel. I’m new to Yapa but was quickly sucked into his fast paced, beautifully poetic and very cinematic writing. Some of the passages in this book is breathtakingly beatiful and packed with deep wisdom and knowledge of the human condition. I can totally understand that it’s taken him almost a decade to finish this book because it really vibrates with perfection. I’ll recommend it to anyone who wants to be moved by words in a book…and that’s all I’ll really care to say, writing this on my clunky little mobile device.

⭐ I bought this book for a Protest Literature class and ended up really enjoying it. This is a section of recent history that I never learned about in school, so I found this fictionalized version of it very interesting.

⭐ Non of the character make me feel anything, they were just one after the other, doing something, been barely described. I never care about them, not even because they were in the middle of a dangerous situation . At least for me all of them seem to be so unreal, so cold

⭐ I needed this for a college English class that I am taking so this wasn’t a book that I really wanted to read but I went in with an opened mind. I honestly don’t like it and was really hard to understand because it kinda reads like a poem. But I understand the message it’s trying to give and I appreciate it. I don’t feel like I will read this again but good job to the author for trying so hard to make this book.

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