The Wake

Let me make one thing clear about Kung Fu High School: It’s not one of those traditional coming-of-age stories about, say, an asthmatic kid who gets picked on at school and starts practicing martial arts to prove that he’s just as good as the next kid. No, that would be Sidekicks starring Chuck Norris. Kung Fu High School, by Ryan Gattis, is structured in much the same way as most martial arts movies are with 45 minutes of exposition in the first half, 45 minutes of climactic high-action fight scenes in the second half.

Imagine, if you will, a high school overrun with gangs, and the proverbial gang leader runs a drug trafficking ring out of the school cafeteria and has the school’s principal on his payroll. Not every gang holds loyalty to this ringleader, so naturally there’s just a bit of conflict.

Two gangs, the Waves and the Wolves, stand against the “evil gangs” who serve the previously mentioned big-boss Ridley; a 23-year-old high school senior who’s got a cutting fetish and an obsession with striped polo shirts. In an attempt to reduce his opposition, Ridley whispers quiet tales of betrayal into the ears of his enemies, leading them to battle amongst themselves until only one evil über-gang remains.
Strangely, Kung Fu High School is not narrated by the master fighter of the story. Rather, it is told from the viewpoint of 15-year-old Jen B., a member of one of the “good” gangs, the Waves. She must survive in the wake of a war that is overtaking KFHS. When her cousin Jimmy, the martial arts savant with a knack for mysteriously teleporting mid-battle, comes to KFHS after promising his mother to never do battle again, Jen must help him survive the ‘kick-in’ that all new students receive. He must help her when he starts to rethink his vow of pacifism. Additionally, in the fog of war, Jen and Jimmy also try to justify the romantic interest that they have shared since their childhood years (yes, incest abounds in this story, with interesting and strange subsets).

Kung Fu High School, as opposed to many other books that attempt to vividly describe action sequences, uses emotion very well to explain fights, flights and the most graphically violent deaths one might find in such a novel. And who says that an author has to be a linguistics expert like Anthony Burgess or J.R.R. Tolkien to create a vernacular that can exist solely within a single book? Gattis goes to great lengths to make his novel clearly anecdotal, explaining inside jokes, made-up vocabulary, and even using illustrations where written descriptions run the risk of confusion.

All details aside, the core of Gattis’ story is a character trying to adept and survive in whatever situations she ends up in. Whether she’s rolling against an opposing gang member, supporting her disabled father, cleaning blood off her homework or reminiscing about her deceased mother, Jen’s just a kid growing up. If you liked Fight Club or Battle Royale because they were graphic, psychological and deeply personal, then Kung Fu High School would be a good place to satisfy those expectations.