Category Archives: Mixed: Includes anti-fat, neutral, and fat positive portrayals

The Love Songs of W.E.B DuBois

The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois (2021) by Honorée Fannone Jeffers was an Oprah’s club pick, a finalist for the Kirkus prize that year, along with several Goodreads nominations, and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t honored more. Overall, it’s a sprawling, beautifully written, epic work of historical fiction, poetic and heartbreaking and intricate. At nearlyContinue reading “The Love Songs of W.E.B DuBois”

Unmarriageable

Unmarriageable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan (2019) by Soniah Kamal was a delightful retelling of Austen’s novel, set in the year 2000 in a small town, Dilipibad, in Pakistan. I was so intrigued I accidentally bought two copies at the library sale without realizing it! Alys Binat and her sister Jena are thirty and thirty-twoContinue reading “Unmarriageable”

Weightless: Making Space for my Resilient Body and Soul

This is a great book of essays dealing with the intersectionality of anti-fatness, racism, misogyny, and chronic illness, written by an astute observer of pop culture.

Amy Among the Serial Killers

I didn’t know that Amy Among the Serial Killers (2022) by Jincy Willett was the third book in a series that begins with The Writing Class and Amy Falls Down when I picked it up at the library, but it worked as a standalone. Carla is just fine; she is a grown-up former child starContinue reading “Amy Among the Serial Killers”

Interior Chinatown

Interior Chinatown (2020) by Charles Yu is a very quick read, and has one of the most interesting formats that I’ve read-novel-as-screenplay! I didn’t know when I picked it out to read that it won the National Book Award in 2020, but I’m not surprised. Yu tells the story of Willis Wu, who plays “GenericContinue reading “Interior Chinatown”

The Summer Place

The Summer Place (2022) is Jennifer Weiner’s latest, following on her practice of taking minor characters from previous books and giving them their time in the spotlight. I have mixed feelings about Weiner’s work as far as how she portrays fatness, which I delineated in my review of her 2021 novel That Summer, which IContinue reading “The Summer Place”

Big Boned

Big Boned (2021) by Jo Watson was a random library pick based on its title, cover, and jacket copy, which begins “Can she be herself in a one-size-fits-all world?” I knew that I had to read this young adult romance, which promised to be fat positive. Lori is a high school senior, an artist whoContinue reading “Big Boned”

That Summer

In That Summer (2021), Jennifer Weiner illuminates both the individual cruelty of an entitled teenage boy and the everyday misogyny of a privileged male lawyer. Both take advantage of women named Diana. Daisy Shoemaker is Hal’s wife. They have a house in the suburbs and a 15-year old daughter Beatrice, who is giving them someContinue reading “That Summer”