HIT: A Memoir
of Blue Collars, Bars and Bad Boys
In “Hit: A Memoir of Blue Collars, Bars and Bad Boys,” Kim Curtis finds herself in the middle of the criminal justice system – a system she thought she understood and knew how to navigate after more than a dozen years covering murders, rapes and executions as a reporter for The Associated Press.
But nothing is simple or straightforward as she’s plunged into a confusing and underfunded domestic violence prosecution within a judicial system that, even in liberal San Francisco, is tilted in favor of her white, high-tech software engineer ex-boyfriend.
“I walked back to the dingy Tenderloin bar. The cops were gone. They had driven away with Matt handcuffed in their back seat. The ambulance was gone, too. The paramedics had offered to take me to nearby St. Francis, but I’d refused and they hadn’t insisted. … Courtney, the 20-something, tattooed bartender, saw me and walked over. “Are you okay? I poured you some wine. You look like you need it.”
Curtis is unprepared for her role as “that woman,” how she herself defined women assaulted by their boyfriends and husbands. She never understood, never tried to understand how they ended up bruised and beaten, angry and terrified, unable to find justice, much less peace. Now, she finds herself among them, one of them.
Curtis grew up Catholic in working class in Milwaukee, the daughter of a high-school dropout, Vietnam veteran father and a homemaker mother. At 17, she joined the military as a way out _ to her first airplane ride, her first career, her first love.
“Hit: A Memoir of Blue Collars, Bars and Bad Boys” provides a unique look at a problem that simply won’t go away. Despite feminism, empowerment, and enlightenment, women still find themselves victims of the men who profess to love them. Curtis’ memoir explores the ways in which the system still favors white men with money and needlessly traumatizes victims over and over again before so-called justice is handed down – or not.