Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is a 2016 novel by Sri Lankan American author Sunil Yapa. Set in a contemporary American city, it follows Victor, a young homeless man, a young woman named King, and two police officers, Park and Ju, who navigate different sides of their city’s unrest and injustice. While King positions herself directly against the police state, Victor reaches a more ambivalent political consciousness. Officers Park and Ju face different moral quandaries in their job capacities. Yapa’s novel illuminates how easy it is to make grave moral errors, often without reaching full awareness of them. The novel has been celebrated for its complex depiction of urban crime and justice.

The novel opens in an underpass, where Victor is smoking weed and taking shelter. Hears a protest going on, he joins the crowd, hoping to make enough money selling weed to take a plane to a different city. Each protester he approaches turns him down; one young woman asserts that it is more than a protest. A preacher, John Henry echoes the woman’s words, equating their movement to a new religion. Meanwhile, Officers Park and Ju wait at the edges of the protest for signs of trouble. In a misuse of their power, they threaten a girl who offers them coffee. Eventually, someone reports Victor to an officer, who tries to take his bag. Witnessing this interaction, King advocates for Victor, causing Ju to dial down his aggressive enforcing.

Next, the story turns to King. King describes her difficult path as a young adult: she entered prostitution when she was nineteen, fell in love with a boy, and became an impassioned, even militant and violent protestor. King eventually renounced violence as an instrument for political change. In contrast, John Henry’s philosophy of protest has always been community-based. King invites Victor to join the next protest. Victor turns her down but reverses his decision after recalling a traumatic memory from childhood in which his father burned all of his books.



In a separate vignette, Sri Lankan ambassador Dr. Charles Wickramsinghe is aboard a plane to America for a World Trade Organization conference. When he lands, the protest blocks his route to the convention center, and he is notified that the event has been canceled. The city’s mayor orders Police Captain Bishop, to break up the protest; in his futile effort, Bishop remembers once finding his son, who is revealed to be Victor, homeless. He regrets ordering his officers to fire tear gas on the protestors even as he batters them himself. The utter chaos of the protest causes Victor to feel disillusioned about its purpose. He is more skeptical than ever about whether protest actually changes the lives of marginalized people.

Charles approaches Officers Park and Ju, demanding an explanation for the protest; in response, they arrest him, throwing him on a bus being used as a makeshift jail. The bus is full of protestors sharing their experiences of police violence. Eventually released from the jail, Charles makes his way into the convention center. Victor remains lost in the protest, engrossed in his memories of the communities to which he no longer belongs. King remembers a traumatic incident of shooting someone during a protest at the Mexican border. Park prepares to shoot Victor, who, growing increasingly self-destructive and violent, sets his sights on the police chief. Victor is beaten brutally by the cops. Officer Ju shoots King in a desperate effort to stop the onslaught of protestors. He realizes that neither the protestors nor the cops are on the right side of the chaos.

Charles enters the WTO convention, where he reunites with his colleagues, the WTO director, and one of his old classmates. The WTO director mocks him for believing that he had a chance of moving up in the organization. On the TV, a news headline reads “Violent Protestors Clash with Police.” King is rushed away in an ambulance, and Bishop tries to take care of Victor’s wounds. In a series of final, short scenes, all of the major characters are forced to meditate on the senselessness and disorder of the world.