Brace for Impact

March 7, 2022
This propulsive debut from Montesanti explores queer belonging, body image, and emotional healing through the exhilarating lens of roller derby. While pursuing an MFA at Washington University of St. Louis, a 22-year-old Montesanti heard about a local roller derby league looking for recruits. Though unfamiliar with the sport’s nuances, she understood its “unpredictability and violence” and saw in it a space to embrace her queerness. Calling forth the same dedication that fueled her as a competitive youth swimmer, Montesanti dove into derby. “I was looking for a community, but I also wanted to feel pain,” she recalls. “I wanted to hit.” As Montesanti’s passion veers into obsession, her recollections of her childhood—ruled by a religious mother whose psychological abuse left Montesanti “punish myself for my failure to justify my fear: four hours of swimming laps... skipping meals, bingeing and purging”—lend heart-wrenching context. As she writes, “No derby meant no structure, no exercise routine, no chosen family.” However, her bracing story veers from fraught to exuberantly cathartic when, after recovering from an injury on the track, Montesanti resolves to wield her pain as power, reclaiming “the way the Church had silenced me—both as a woman and as a gay woman,” by anointing herself the derby moniker Joan of Spark. This spirited coming-of-age account brims with joy and resilience.