Susan Schorn

Susan Schorn led an anxious life. For no clear reason, she had become progressively paralyzed by fear. Fed up with feeling powerless, she took up karate.

She learned how to say no and how to fight when you have to (even in the dark). Karate taught her how to persuade her husband to wear a helmet, best one bossy Girl Scout troop leader, and set boundaries with an over-sharing boss. Here this double black belt recounts a fighting, biting, laughing woman’s journey on the road to living fearlessly—where enlightenment is as much about embracing absurdity and landing a punch as about finding that perfect method of meditation.

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Praise for Smile at Strangers
Eat, pray…kick ass. Smile at Strangers is the ultimate self-defense guide—from the liberation of the word ‘no’ to protecting yourself from overzealous Girl Scout troop leaders—all the while cleverly disguised as an insightful, grounded memoir with bursts of hilarity that hit you like a roundhouse. Delivered with self-deprecating candor, Schorn’s life lessons learned at the dojo will resonate with anyone who’s ever tried to remodel a house, raise kids, cope with a health crisis, navigate office politics or hyperventilated—essentially anyone who’s ever been slammed on the mat while testing for the black belt of life. In fact, Schorn’s skill at karate is only outmatched by her mastery at prose. Like the fighter herself, you can’t put this one down.
—Mary Moore, author of The Unexpected When You’re Expecting: Clear, Comprehensive, Month-by-Month Dread

Funny, focused, and fierce with wiry wisdom, this memoir is a muscular meditation on living fearlessly. It’s a sort of ‘Code of the Samurai’ for every 21st century person, written by a witty literature professor with a second-degree black belt and a keen eye for spotting human folly. Schorn breaks down our conventional understanding of confronting menace in the world with the same ease that she breaks planks of wood. A perfect, engaging read for tackling college, the workplace, marriage, or prison—basically anywhere humans congregate with complicated motives.
—Joe Loya, author of The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber

Susan Schorn is a badass black belt with a huge heart and generous wit. This inspiring, often funny tale of her journey—from a cowering, self-confessed “neurotic” to a martial arts master—is not just about the kick. It’s about how the lessons of karate can be applied to women’s daily lives to make us stronger and less fearful—as friends, mothers, wives, and professionals—no matter how we dress or where we go. Smile at Strangers is a power tool indeed. It’s a swift chop to the myth that women need to live like victims in order to survive. It made me want to take up martial arts too—and keep reading.
—Susan Jane Gilman, author of Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress

This book delivers a swift, lethal karate chop at pantywaistedness in all its forms. With huge amounts of wit and grace, Susan Schorn looks Adversity in the eye, and crushes that sucker’s windpipe.
—Henry Alford, author of Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?: A Modern Guide to Manners

This is a memoir I’ll be thinking and talking about for a long time. To begin with, the voice is unique—trust me, you’ve never heard anyone talk about coping with fear and anger the way Susan Schorn does. The writing is hilarious at times, dead serious when it needs to be, and always brilliant. The insights into the psychology of martial arts training—with special emphasis on the experiences of female students and teachers—is sure to launch a thousand discussions about violence, gender, confidence, and how to deal with alligators. I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and I will make sure never to get into a fistfight with its author.
—Mark Salzman, author of Iron and Silk

Hey readers! Time to put on your karate pants and crush some imaginary trachea! In Smile at Strangers Susan Schorn urges us to confront our fears in an increasingly scary world. Who knew that the highs and lows of the dojo held superb—and often funny— lessons for life? Schorn never suggests that karate is the only path, or even the best path. She is reminding us that we have a choice. We all experience fear, but we can choose our response to it. Overall, reading Smile at Strangers is sort of like watching samurai chanbara, only with more safety helmets and female bonding. You wince, but you can’t look away.
—Rhoda Janzen, author of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Smile at Strangers is an elegant, often hilarious, and very personal account of women who fight and the paths they take to fearlessness. If you’re anywhere on that path—and if you love someone who is—it might be your most essential read of the year.
—Michael Erard, author of Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners

Eesha Pandit has a wonderful piece over at The Nation about bystander intervention. I’m loathe to summarize it because she does such stellar job of explaining the problems and contextualizing them in light of Charles Ramsey’s heroism in Ohio. You really should read the whole thing.

Pandit is addressing a problem self defense instructors know all too well: Our tendency to assume that calling the police is always a productive response to threats. Yes, reporting crimes is important. The police can and do intervene helpfully in lots of ugly situations. But the truth is that for many individuals–women of color; women in general; gay, queer, and transgendered people; the impoverished; the uneducated–calling the police can actively worsen the impact of violence.

Our flawed criminal justice system is part of the problem of violence in this country–why it persists, why it affects some communities so severely, and why the obvious solutions don’t seem to work very well. That’s one reason that, to me, “self defense” now means not just knowing how to deescalate an encounter or escape an assailant, but also recognizing my obligation to speak out about systemic problems that make our communities less safe–problems like poverty, homophobia, and institutionalized racism.

One reason individuals often fail to act when they witness violence is that we are encouraged not to. If we do act, what happens? The police say they can’t do anything. The principal claims the kid’s behavior is no big deal. The neighbors tell us to mind our own damn business. The senator responds with a form letter. It’s hard to be persistent in the face of such discouraging, belittling, shaming responses. But, as I keep telling myself: We need to do it anyway.

A couple of weeks ago, my son was walking his younger sister home from her after-school program. She had taken a stuffed animal to school with her that day, and asked him to carry it home for her. As they trudged along the sidewalk, a woman in a station wagon slowed down and eyed them suspiciously. Then she executed a U-turn on a busy street, drove back, and pulled into the parking the kids were crossing.

“Young man!” she called out to my son, “Is that your stuffed dog you’re carrying?”

“No, it’s hers,” my son said, pointing to his sister.

“Then why do you have it?” the woman asked.

“She asked me to carry it,” he explained. His sister verified this, and the woman, after observing them closely for a minute, said, “Well then, you’re a good kid. I just wanted to make sure nobody was teasing anyone or anything.” And she drove off.

My kids were perplexed by this encounter, and my husband thought it was ridiculous. But I was pretty happy about it. This woman thought she might be witnessing a teenager tormenting a third-grader, and she stopped to find out. And yes, she came across as a little weird. I get the sense that she could have been a bit less brusque with my son, who is as mild-mannered as they make them. Still, she did something that was clearly uncomfortable for her, because she didn’t want a big kid to hurt a smaller one.

That’s all we’re really called upon to do, if we want a safer world. It’s just that we have to do it persistently, along every path we travel, and on others’ paths that intersect with ours.

Smile at Strangers

Smile at Strangers

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“Young Man, Is That Your Dog?”