Rumble Young Man Rumble is a modern coming of age story. I wrote it because as a young man I did not identify with any of the iconic coming of age stories people gave me. I don’t think any of my peers did either. It’s 2014, hand your average American 20 year old a copy of Catcher in the Rye and see if they get past the first couple pages… they won’t. It’s sad, because Catcher is a great book, but it just doesn’t speak to the experience of growing up now. There aren’t too many books that do. When I taught high school English, it became glaringly apparent that my students were suffering from a similar lack of literature they could identify with. When I taught undergrads in college, I found the same thing to be true. In America, we no longer come of age in our teenage years: we come of age in our mid twenties with far more access and danger around us. I wrote Rumble Young Man Rumble to renew the dialogue of the genre.
I wrote it to reach out to the young men and women who, unfortunately, look at books like they are things that belong on a dusty library shelf.
On a more personal note, I wanted Rumble to be a story about love, loss, and prizefighting, all things I find to be infinitely fascinating and quite similar to each other.
Who do you think would be most affected by or touched by this work?
It is my hope that this book finds its way into the hands of sensitive and angry young men who are learning to become adults. I think that they would be the most touched by this story. I also think people who’ve never given ring fighting a second thought but had the courage to pick up this book will be incredibly surprised at the complexity and emotion portrayed in this story with regard to fighting. It is a book that, if you can look past some of the raw grit, can transcend age and gender variables.
About the Author
Dante Zúñiga-West is a storyteller who escaped from Los Angeles. He is a graduate of the Evergreen State College and the Cal Arts MFA Writing Program. His fiction has been published in numerous literary journals, both online and in print; his journalism, in alternative newspapers and adventure magazines. He has worked as a high school English teacher, a librarian, a kitchen cook, a graduate teaching assistant, a childcare specialist, a counselor for the developmentally disabled, a bouncer, a Muay Thai kickboxing instructor, a bartender, a cab driver, a writing instructor to homeless youth, a landscaper, a videogame salesman, a copy-shop attendant, an SAT tutor, a freelance journalist, a newspaper editor, a private security guard, an at-risk-youth counselor and a touring musician. He lives off the grid in the coastal mountain range of Oregon.
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