Dear lawyers and other grown-ups at the Minneapolis Star Tribune,

Please do not come after me with your briefcases and sensible shoes and striped ties and serious expressions. I have no choice but to post the text of your review of my book because you only keep articles archived on your web site for 14 days, and I can’t link my readers directly to you.

The First Amendment rocks!
Melicious

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When she straps on her skates and shoves in her mouth guard, Melissa Joulwan morphs into Melicious—and the whirlwind on wheels begins.

Review by Andrea Hoag, Special to the Star Tribune

The old brawl game is back. The roller-derby craze that swept the nation in the ‘50s and ‘60s has muscled its way back into public view with a vengeance, only this time it’s fueled by a hyper-feminist shot of girl power.

In a memoir that reads like a thriller, freelance-writer-turned-rollergirl Melissa (Melicious) Joulwan exposes the sheer sports perfection that can occur when a group of derby-obsessed women bring their A-game to the fast and furious flat track.

In 2001 Joulwan was new to Austin, Texas, struggling to make new friends and find her niche when she stumbled across a flier for the roller derby. In one velocity-filled evening, the author was speeding toward a brand-new life and a new family of friends. Often wistful for childhood Saturdays at her hometown roller rink, Joulwan jumped at the chance to practice with the women flying past her at lightning speed. Well, part of her jumped at the chance.

“Opening the door to walk into the rink that night, my stomach did the Twist and my palms were slick. My feet propelled me forward, but I felt like the rest of me was flying backward through a tunnel.”

After conquering her initial insecurities – including a bad case of poor body-image – Joulwan’s alter ego emerged, and soon “Melicious” was elbowing her way into the heart of Texas fans, ultimately capturing the title of Miss Texas Rollergirl and Fan Favorite.

All is not rosy in the rough-and-tumble world of the derby, however, and Joulwan does some of her best writing when she reveals the hardships, mean-girl rivalries and horrifying injuries that can be a part of the game. Readers’ hearts will go out to Whiskey L’Amour, a rookie for the Rhinestone Cowgirls, whose debut bout proved how dangerous the sport can be. Pirouetting to the cheers of the audience one minute, “in less than a blink, she was a crumple on the concrete floor. ... Her foot seemed to be detached from the rest of her leg. Her skate dangled at a sickening angle, held in place only by her sock.”

Whiskey suffered a clean break of both her tibia and fibula, and when league officials failed to offer her any substantial help with mushrooming medical expenses, Joulwan’s mounting frustrations with the organization finally boiled over. She and her friends broke away from their original Austin league to form the Texas Rollergirls.

With a mixture of pride and dismay, the women soon saw successful leagues popping up nationwide—in Kansas City, Chicago, and, yes, Minneapolis.

Joulwan tells of the fearless Donnelly sisters (Head Trauma, Rolls Wilder and Flogging Molly), who rounded up recruits and formed the Minnesota RollerGirls league in 2004. More than 1,500 fans came out on a black January night to meet the Atomic Bombshells, Dagger Dolls, Garda Belts and Rockits, who eventually jammed their way to fame in the 4,500-seat Roy Wilkins Auditorium during the 2004 NHL strike.

As the author’s research expanded, so did her appreciation for a gate-crashing sport that allows for so much female self-expression.

“It was startling at first to see how Rollergirls really did seem to be the same everywhere. We’re women who grew up and found that working forty-plus hours a week … can be drudgery. That no one worth knowing is going to discriminate against us if we have tattoos or piercing or funny-colored hair. That we can have kids if we want to, but the get-married-have-children rule doesn’t necessarily need to apply. After eschewing sports as either a childhood battleground or the domain of over-achieving, testosterone-drunk lunkheads, we’ve learned that building muscle and working up a sweat feels really, really great.”

Like the derby itself, Joulwan’s book is pure, free-wheeling entertainment. Lace ‘em up, ladies!

Andrea Hoag also reviews for the Kansas City Star and other newspapers. She lives in Lawrence, Kan.

[http://www.startribune.com/384/story/1005435.html]