Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence

Mike is an older boy who takes the young Canada under his wing. His exact age is not given, but he is probably in his late teens or early twenties. He is old enough to live on his own–in a basement apartment that is known as “the cut” (55)–but is also young enough to still live in an adolescent world, spending his time playing basketball and hanging out on the street. In this sense, he is far more aware of the reality of Canada’s surroundings than are any of the adults in Canada’s life, and has more useful practical information to teach Canada. He is old enough to be a guide and a protector to Canada but is not so old that he is out of touch.

Mike is similar to Canada in that he is interested in books and learning, and the two of them are able to have serious, earnest discussions. Canada states, “With Mike I could be myself” (55). Mike is an important example to Canada of someone who has mastered his difficult surroundings while remaining his own person.    

Canada’s mother does not appear very frequently in this memoir, yet her few appearances signify that she is a loving, forceful figure in his life. She is a single mother of four boys, doing her best to raise her children on her own and with “no child support, no nothing” (4). Her husband has left the family by the time that the memoir begins, and according to Canada was absent as a parent even while he lived with them: “he was not a strong presence in our family” (3).

Canada’s mother comes across as someone who in all ways does her best, even if her best is imperfect. Just as she struggles to support her family on minimum-wage jobs, so does she struggle to help Canada and his brothers navigate their tough neighborhood. In the first chapter of the memoir, she insists that Daniel and John, Canada’s two older brothers, retrieve a jacket of John’s that has been stolen by a playground bully. She insists on this partly because, as she tells them, she cannot afford to buy a new jacket, but also in order to teach them a lesson about defending themselves. This is an important lesson for Canada, and also his first intimation that his mother cannot protect him all the time, and that he must fend for himself. 

John is Canada’s second-oldest brother and is also the brother who is most often mentioned in this book. Although he only appears in the first few chapters of the book, his character charts an interesting trajectory, one that foreshadows the changes that Canada himself will go through. In the first chapter of the book, he is a helpless little boy whose jacket has been stolen by a playground bully, and whose older brother, Daniel, must get the jacket back for him. By Chapter 3 of the book, however, he has been inducted into the street life of their neighborhood. He is the first of the brothers to leave their new apartment and fight a strange boy out on the street, a rite of initiation for new boys. Later, when Canada himself is made to fight a boy of his own age, he looks to John for help and encouragement: “I saw only that his eyes implored me to act. There would be no rescue coming from him” (37). His older brother has briefly become a stranger to him: an episode that shows the great distance, in Canada’s neighborhood, between home and street life, and between the world of adults and children.