“We came to Portland because there was a good alternative public school. Friends …” — Katherine Dunn

In the United States, female fisticuffs were marginalized, first as erotic vaudeville in the 19th century and later as serious competition developed in the first half of the 20th. Legal wars waged by boxers in the 1960s and '70s won women the right to compete professionally nationwide.

My background is standard American blue collar of the itchy-footed variety. We're new-world mongrels. The women in the family read horoscopes, tea leaves, coffee bubbles, Tarot cards and palms.

American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc.

Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.