Joan Is Okay (pub. January 18, 2022) by Weike Wang, follows NYC resident, attending intensive care doctor Joan through the aftermath of the death of her father in China, and the weekend she took away from work to attend his funeral. It follows her through a forced bereavement leave, through the start of the coronavirusContinue reading “Joan Is Okay”
Category Archives: Anti-Fat Biased
Girl In Translation
There is too much anti-fat bias in this otherwise interesting immigrant coming-of-age novel.
O Beautiful
O Beautiful by Jung Yun (coming November 2021) is the story of the return of Elinor Hanson, a forty-something former-model-turned-journalist, to North Dakota near her hometown. Avery is a town full of changes brought by the oil boom in the Bakken shale, where people sleep in parking lots because there are no hotels to beContinue reading “O Beautiful”
Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil
This 1994 Pulitzer finalist doesn’t stand the test of time.
The Queen’s Gambit
I wanted to like The Queen’s Gambit (1983) by Walter Tevis. Although he died in 1984, many writers list him as one of their favorite authors. (See The Writer’s Library, by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager.) I’ve always wanted to learn to play chess, so was drawn to the idea of a girl/woman chess player,Continue reading “The Queen’s Gambit”
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
This memoir by noted Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is highly fatphobic and didn’t make me want to begin a running habit.
In the Time of the Butterflies
I highly recommend this book despite a couple of fatphobic descriptions, because overall it portrays a compelling portrait of feminist resistance, sisterhood, and courage despite an uber-patriarchal dictatorship.
The Night Tiger (spoilers)
Spoiler and Fatphobic Writing Warning: Don’t keep reading if you don’t want to read specific instances of fatphobia or the identity of one of the villians from Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger, which is generally reviewed here. I didn’t see the subtle fatphobia present while I was reading The Night Tiger, which I generally loved,Continue reading “The Night Tiger (spoilers)”
The Night Tiger
The Night Tiger, by Yangsze Choo (2019) transported me back to 1931 Malaya (now Malaysia) with a tale of murder, romance, and weretigers. I loved Choo’s 2013 The Ghost Bride and have no idea why I didn’t highlight it in my best of 2020 posts, so I was looking forward to The Night Tiger. IContinue reading “The Night Tiger”
The Awkward Black Man
The Awkward Black Man by Walter Mosley (2020) is a terribly anti-fat book of seventeen short stories. I had a bad feeling when the first line of the first story “The Good News Is” ended with “after a lifetime of carrying an extra thirty pounds or more, I was finally losing weight.” While some ofContinue reading “The Awkward Black Man”
Reading While Fat 