Growing up as a fat kid, I hardly ever saw myself reflected in the media I consumed. If I did, it was by someone relegated to the side character status as the funny fat friend or the cautionary tale. Now, it’s my great joy to spread the word about books that put fat people in the spotlight—living our best lives, falling in love, and just having our much-deserved Main Character Moments.
You didn’t think I could make this list without including the queen of fat-positive YA, did you? Puddin’ is my absolute favorite Julie Murphy book, and it’s down to how much I adore the main character, Millie Michalchuk. She’s unapologetically dorky and genuine with her kitty sweatshirts and news anchor aspirations, and she reminds me very much of Teen Me.
Her story touches on fat trauma (a diet culture mom, a history at fat camps) but focuses on fat joy, which hit home because girl, same. And her friendship with POV-sharing Callie Reyes is a delight. This is the one I come back to when I need a hug in book shape.
The irresistible companion to the #1 New York Times bestseller Dumplin', now a Netflix feature film starring Danielle Macdonald and Jennifer Aniston, and a soundtrack by Dolly Parton!
Millie Michalchuk has gone to fat camp every year since she was a little girl. Not this year. This year she has new plans to chase her secret dream of being a newscaster-and to kiss the boy she's crushing on.
Callie Reyes is the pretty girl who is next in line for dance team captain and has the popular boyfriend. But when it comes to other girls, she's more frenemy than friend.…
Being overweight presents an intriguing paradox: being physically large and hard to miss, but also being essentially invisible and easy to ignore. Having struggled with weight for my entire life, I’m very familiar with this juxtaposition of opposites. I wanted to write a novel with a plus-sized protagonist set in a different time, the late 1970s in this case, before the notions of size positivity and body diversity had come to life in society’s collective imagination. For me, this was a way of making fat people more visible in books, especially as main characters. I put together this list of books for the same reason.
This book is a memoir of the childhood and early adulthood of a woman overshadowed by her own weight.
The writing in this book is beautiful and evocative, particularly the descriptions of food and eating. That being said, this work is, otherwise, a tough read. The author feels unwanted and alone. She never achieves self-love or the sense of belonging she desires. Moore grew up long before size positivity existed and so she focused her energy and strength on changing rather than accepting herself.
Though it is, at times, an excruciating chronicle of pain, this memoir is an important work because it reminds us how destructive anti-fat bias was in the past, highlighting, as well, how it continues today.
A angst-filled memoir of one woman's obsession with food and one's body offers a poignant coming-of-age story that sets the author's love/hate relationship with food against her painful longing for a family, love, and a sense of belonging. By the author of Never Eat Your Heart Out. 35,000 first printing.
Author Aubrey Gordon (Your Fat Friend, co-host of kickass podcast Maintenance Phase, and all-around-delightful-human-being) breaks down and debunks all of the (still) socially acceptable, pervasive, and oppressive myths about body size and fatness.
Her writing is deeply researched, as well as rooted in her experience in social justice advocacy work – she somehow writes and speaks with an amazing mix of no-B.S. and compassion, a balance that is rare and also, I believe, such an effective communication approach when advocating for human beings to be valued and treated with basic care and respect.
Bonus: When you “read” this book as an audiobook, you get to listen to Aubrey’s voice, which, when you’ve run out of Maintenance Phase, is like coming across a stream in the desert.
“One of the great thinkers of our generation . . . I feel fresher and smarter and happier for sitting down with her.”—Jameela Jamil, iWeigh Podcast
The co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast and creator of Your Fat Friend equips you with the facts to debunk common anti-fat myths and with tools to take action for fat justice
The pushback that shows up in conversations about fat justice takes exceedingly predicable form. Losing weight is easy—calories in, calories out. Fat people are unhealthy. We’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fat…
Growing up as a fat kid, I hardly ever saw myself reflected in the media I consumed. If I did, it was by someone relegated to the side character status as the funny fat friend or the cautionary tale. Now, it’s my great joy to spread the word about books that put fat people in the spotlight—living our best lives, falling in love, and just having our much-deserved Main Character Moments.
Jenna Miller’s books read like the best sort of secret between friends, except the friends are anyone who is at least a little bit nerdy—and as a fat nerdy person, I was instantly in.
The main character Jordan felt so relatable to me; everything from the Doctor Who references to being kind of in love with your ex-best friend to the realistic fears of a queer, fat teenager just trying to get by hit just right. As someone who also grew up queer and fat, I had to finish this one in a day!
"Charmingly wry and sharply perceptive. An ode to first love, complicated friendships, and the messy joy of rewriting your own story." -Becky Albertalli, New York Times bestselling author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Jordan Elliott is a fat, nerdy lesbian and the first junior to be named editor in chief of the school newspaper. Okay, that last part hasn't happened yet, but it will. It's positive thinking that has gotten Jordan this far. Ever since Mackenzie West, her friend-turned-enemy, humiliated her at the start of freshman year, Jordan has thrown herself into journalism and kept her eyes trained…
As a queer, fat disabled Black woman in America, I am all too familiar with the experiences and history that these 5 aforementioned authors detail when it comes how deep fatphobia is embedded in this country. And how it harms us everyday—even if you’re not fat. I remain passionate about the eradication of fatphobia in our society because too much is at stake in terms of housing discrimination, employment discrimination, disability discrimination, healthcare discrimination and etc. for one notto care. - Clarkisha Kent, author and culture critic.
Gordon really gets at the heart of why fatphobia is “unfair”.
Because, once again, it’s not just about name-calling. It’s about the fact that our economy, healthcare system, etc., use fatphobia to discriminate against fat people.
And in a way that I guaranteed to impact our quality of life.
From the creator of Your Fat Friend and co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast, an explosive indictment of the systemic and cultural bias facing plus-size people.
Anti-fatness is everywhere. In What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon unearths the cultural attitudes and social systems that have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat and calls for social justice movements to be inclusive of plus-sized people’s experiences. Unlike the recent wave of memoirs and quasi self-help books that encourage readers to love and accept themselves, Gordon pushes the discussion further towards authentic…
I’m a Philadelphia-based journalist and new author. I’m the Editor at Large for Philadelphia Magazine and President of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. As an openly Black gay journalist, I’ve headlined for speaking frankly about intersectional issues in society regarding race, LGBTQIA, and pop culture. Such experiences have awakened my consciousness as an underrepresented voice in the media and have pushed me to explore societal topics. My new book The Case for Cancel Culture, published by St. Martin's Press, is my way of staking my claim in the global conversation on this buzzworthy topic.
This book proved to me that you can be both funny and brutally honest, insightful and sobering.
Kent, who’s been a rising star in media, holds back no punches in this gut-wrenching that explores sexuality, body positivity, gender, race, and all of the societal afflictions that come with one learning to embrace themselves unapologetically.
The book not only explores the ideas we already have on such subject matter, but challenges us to rethink everything we often promote as positive affirmation.
It’s the kind of book you read multiple times as a pathway to becoming a more empathic person to individuals you already thought you understood.
In this disarming and candid memoir, cultural critic Clarkisha Kent unpacks the kind of compounded problems you face when you’re a fat, Black, queer woman in a society obsessed with heteronormativity.
There was no easy way for Kent to navigate personal discovery and self-love. As a dark-skinned, first-generation American facing a myriad of mental health issues and intergenerational trauma, at times Kent’s body felt like a cosmic punishment. In the face of body dysmorphia, homophobia, anti-Blackness, and respectability politics, the pursuit of “high self-esteem” seemed oxymoronic.
Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto is a humorous, at times tragic,…
I’m drawn to stories about human nature and the many lifestyles people choose to live. My mother often tells me I’m like my great aunt Freda, who has a love for beautiful and fantastic things. Freda was famous in my mind, and I believe I was further drawn to reading about fame because I wanted to know what that world looked like. Is too much money stressful? Are social events unwanted obligations? Are famous marriages bound to fail? This list is a glimpse into the lifestyles of the rich and famous and both the curses and blessings of their daily lives.
This is a story that many of us have experienced. The reality of it pulled me in. When I was in middle school, a boy I had “dated” made copies of a very personal letter I had written him. He and his buddy then handed the letter out to everyone. Classmates mockingly read the letter out loud to me. How mortifying. I feel you, Cannie Shapiro.
I also love this story because Cannie hits it off with a starlet who turns into a close friend. Who doesn’t want a famous bff? As Cannie pushed to find her way through the heartache and betrayal, I felt for her and wanted her to heal so she could find love and happiness again.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner brings to life an irresistibly funny and relatable heroine in the novel The Boston Globe called “funny, fanciful, extremely poignant, and rich with insight.”
For twenty-eight years, things have been tripping along nicely for Cannie Shapiro. Sure, her mother has come charging out of the closet, and her father has long since dropped out of her world. But she loves her friends, her rat terrier, Nifkin, and her job as pop culture reporter for The Philadelphia Examiner. She’s even made a tenuous peace with her plus-size body.
I’ve loved reading novels about strong, quirky women since childhood (Nancy Drew, Ramona Quimby, Harriet the Spy, the heroines of Judy Blume novels, just for starting examples!). As I grew into writing my own stories, I also started studying women’s history. I merged these two interests to begin writing historical novels with strong women protagonists. I love the challenge of researching to figure out the details of women’s day-to-day lives–so many unrecorded stories!–and I love to advocate for the idea (fortunately not as revolutionary as it once was) that a woman can be the hero of her own story and that each woman’s story is important to tell.
Dolores Price is one of the most honest, funny, and irresistible narrators I’ve ever encountered, and the story of her coming of age grabbed me by the heart and didn’t let go until the very last page. I found the trauma she suffers to be highly relatable, and her way of plowing through it is both admirable and heartbreaking.
I’ve read this book at least three times over the last several years, and each time, it has made me cry harder than any other book I’ve read. For me, each time I’ve read this book, it’s been an amazing, cathartic experience.
Dolores Price is the wry and overweight, sensitive and pained, cynical heroine of this novel. The story follows her from four to 40, from her shattered family life through the hellish circles of sexual and food abuse to her gradual recovery and her fight to love again.
Being overweight presents an intriguing paradox: being physically large and hard to miss, but also being essentially invisible and easy to ignore. Having struggled with weight for my entire life, I’m very familiar with this juxtaposition of opposites. I wanted to write a novel with a plus-sized protagonist set in a different time, the late 1970s in this case, before the notions of size positivity and body diversity had come to life in society’s collective imagination. For me, this was a way of making fat people more visible in books, especially as main characters. I put together this list of books for the same reason.
This book follows the lives of three friends, Emerson, Georgia, and Marley, who first met at fat camp as teenagers. Back then, they made a list of all the things they would do when they were skinny.
The novel opens with the tragic death of Emerson, who gives her friends a copy of the list and asks that they complete all the items.
As Georgia and Marley work to fulfill their friend’s dying wish, they must confront the loss and emptiness in their own lives, believe in their own worth, and beat back their detractors – quite literally in one empowering physical altercation in a bar. The characters in this book are complex, easy to love, and hard to forget.
A box or two of tissues is definitely recommended for this read.
Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults.
As a queer, fat disabled Black woman in America, I am all too familiar with the experiences and history that these 5 aforementioned authors detail when it comes how deep fatphobia is embedded in this country. And how it harms us everyday—even if you’re not fat. I remain passionate about the eradication of fatphobia in our society because too much is at stake in terms of housing discrimination, employment discrimination, disability discrimination, healthcare discrimination and etc. for one notto care. - Clarkisha Kent, author and culture critic.
Dionne digs deep on what exactly one means by “surveillance and control” levied at fat women (especially where “health” is concerned, or rather concern trolls).
A poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender—and toward a brighter future—from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne
My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.
In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black woman are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to diagnosis with heart failure at age…
