Review: Brace for Impact by Gabe Montesanti

Reviewed by Ashton Peiman

In her new memoir Brace for Impact, Gabe Montesanti writes, “I was looking for a community, but I also wanted to feel pain. I wanted to hit and be hit. The unpredictability and violence of the sport was magnetic in its appeal—it was an arena I already understood.” Here, Montesanti is referring to roller derby, a sport she finds after moving to St. Louis with her longtime girlfriend, Kelly. Throughout Montesanti’s memoir, readers follow her experiences with learning (and loving) roller derby—from watching a scrimmage during recruit night in the first chapter to attending the Worldwide Roller Derby Convention in the penultimate chapter—as past abuse from her mother, social anxieties, and an unhealthy body image become more apparent.

Roller derby is a brutal sport. I’ve never had the opportunity to play, though I trained in martial arts for ten years, so I’m no stranger to aggressive sports that often involve injuries and mishaps. Many derby players in Montesanti’s memoir are quick to point out that derby is nothing like the movie Whip It. There are structured rules, but there’s also hip-checking, pushing, jumping, and multiple people racing for points. All while on skates. For Montesanti, the sport was meant to replace swimming—something she had competed in most of her life—but it becomes a way for Montesanti to find “a community, queer friendship, and something fun that felt as far away from my hometown as possible.”

Montesanti’s roller derby journey begins with recruit night at Arch Rival Roller Derby, St. Louis’s world-renowned derby league. Montesanti then signs up for a training program, which can lead to a chance to play on an official Arch Rival team. Even though derby is supposed to give Montesanti control over her body, during this training we see the unhealthy way Montesanti treats herself.

Being judged by her mother for her weight and her looks during her childhood gives Montesanti insecurities and obsessions about her body, resulting in rigorous and consistent exercise regimes and bulimic episodes. She writes, “It was the lens through which I saw myself: my body as a vehicle to win, my body as something of which there literally needed to be less.” Montesanti’s “ideal” body type (whatever that means) was a swimmer’s body—“the tall girls, the flat girls, the girls whose training was compatible with their genetics.” And having a mother who so easily remarks, “If you just lost ten pounds you’d be faster. Just think about it. It’s physics. Less weight to haul from one end of the pool to the other,” does not make for a healthy self-image.

It’s no surprise then that Montesanti is confused by the body positivity exhibited in derby, where players of all sizes take to the track and use whatever shape and weight they have to their advantage. Experienced derby skaters tell her that her body type—referred to as “dense,” “thick,” and “a beefcake”—makes her an ideal blocker. Montesanti wonders when she attends her first practice with Arch Rival’s Stunt Devils team, “Were thick skaters advantaged in derby? Were curves merely soft surfaces for competitors to bounce off of? Did it help to not have a swimmer’s body?”

Montesanti’s awkwardness, anxiousness, and indecisiveness is wholly relatable for queer people, especially me. Montesanti and I both came out to our parents in college—she as a lesbian, me as a transgender man. While it was my father who had a tough time accepting my identity, Montesanti’s mother is the main problem, crying about Montesanti being “too stupid to be making a decision like this” (even though being queer is definitely not a choice). In an understandable move, Montesanti resorts to telling her mom that she had broken up with her girlfriend, “hoping the lie would make things go back to normal.”

Montesanti uses roller derby to wrestle with abuse from her mother and to find “true friendship, healthy athleticism, accepting community, and proud queerness.” She constantly worries about making friends as an adult, saying too much and saying too little, and finding ways to appear “normal” without revealing any said past childhood traumas. (Don’t we all, Montesanti.)

Just when you think she is making progress, Montesanti takes a couple steps back—with her mother, with her bulimia, and even with derby—but you keep rooting for her. Montesanti balances the grim stories, such as when her mother purposefully let Montesanti roll toward traffic while she was confined to a wheelchair, with lighter and more humorous memories of derby, such as befriending a skater who wears underwear on her head (not as a salute to Captain Underpants), researching and choosing from a slew of roller derby names (my personal favorite was Pelvis Breastly), and even swimming in a uterus-shaped swimming pool on a rooftop (you’ll have to read more to figure that one out).

For any other fellow queer people, athletes, or troubled souls in general, Montesanti’s book provides readers with “a little place of queer heaven”—a description that she labels roller derby with as it shows her “so many different people, united in their love of fun, their need for community, and most of all, the shared experience of feeling a little different, whether from queerness or quirkiness or both.” And I wholly agree.

Ashton Peiman is a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, earning his MA in English. As a voracious homebody, he enjoys putting together puzzles, trying out new baking recipes, and playing fetch with his cat, Stinky.