I admit it, I’m a bookworm. I already own more books than I could possibly read in my life. My list of books to read would take multiple lifetimes to get through. And yet I continue to add more. When there is a new topic I want to learn, I collect lists of books. Sadly, I don't read nearly as many as I would like, but that doesn't seem like a good reason to stop collecting lists of books to read!
If I’m not going to read all the books on my list, at the very least I can help spread the book list love. This is my current list of recently published, reprinted, or about to be published fat positive books. Let me know which one is your favorite. Maybe I’ll get to that one first!
YA Fiction
In this YA novel, the plus size girl gets the attention of the hot guys, the popular girl clique is not shallow but has strong convictions and substance, and the ultimate love story is not only about romance but about how to show radical love to the people in your life, including to yourself. “Love Is a Revolution is a powerful look at a young Black girl's journey to self-acceptance in all facets of her life, and a beautiful example of how communities become family.” – Brandy Colbert, award-winning author of THE VOTING BOOTH.
From Julie Murphy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dumplin’, comes the first in a two-book origin story of Faith, a groundbreaking, plus-sized superhero from the Valiant Entertainment comics. Faith is a regular senior in high school. Except she recently discovered she could fly. When people begin to vanish from the town, only Faith seems able to connect the dots.
Fat girls and boys and nonbinary teens are: friends who lift each other up, heroes who rescue themselves, big bodies in space, intellects taking up space, and bodies looking and feeling beautiful. They express themselves through fashion, sports and other physical pursuits, through food, and music, and art. They are flirting and falling in love. They are loving to themselves and one another. With stories that feature fat main characters starring in a multitude of stories and genres, and written by authors who live these lives too, this is truly a unique collection that shows fat young people the representation they deserve.
Healthy at Every Size Based Nutrition
This is a practical and interactive guide follow-up to Just Eat It by Registered Nutritionist Laura Thomas PhD. Just published this year, it contains more than eighty activities – from journaling to self-care techniques – to help you reframe your approach to food and eating and find an escape from diets and restriction. Reviewers have indicated this book was helpful in a way that Intuitive Eating was not for them. Some of the exercises incorporate a form of CBT called ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy).
Intuitive Eating (A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach) by RDN Evelyn Tribole, MS & RDN Elyse Resch, MS
Newly revised and updated for 2020, this is the gold-standard for Health at Every Size nutrition. For those of us who have spent a lifetime fighting our bodies and food, this is a must read book.
NonFiction
Object Lessons, published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic, is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
In Hanne Blank's Fat we find fat as state, as possession, as metaphor, as symptom, as object of desire, intellectual and carnal. Here, “feeling fat” and literal fat merge, blurring the boundaries and infusing one another with richer, fattier meanings.
Fat and Queer: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Bodies and Lives by Miguel M. Morales, Bruce Owens Grimm, Tiff Ferentini
Celebrating fat and queer bodies and lives, this book challenges negative and damaging representations of queer and fat bodies and offers readers ways to reclaim their bodies, providing stories of support, inspiration and empowerment.
Memoirs
We recently highlighter Leah Vernon in our post on Black influencers you should be following.
This is a searingly honest memoir of one young woman’s journey toward self-acceptance as she comes to see her body as a symbol of rebellion and hope and chooses to live her life unapologetically.
#VERYFAT #VERYBRAVE: The Fat Girl's Guide to Being #Brave and Not a Dejected, Melancholy, Down-in-the-Dumps Weeping Fat Girl in a Bikini by Nicole Byer
Nicoel Byer frame Nailed It! brings us possible hthee longest title of the year! The actress, comedian, and podcaster extraordinaire's guide to being a #brave, bikini-wearing badass.
In her debut book, Fattily Ever After, Stephanie Yeboah speaks openly and courageously about her own experience on navigating life as a black, plus-sized woman – telling it how it really is – and how she has managed to find self-acceptance in a world where judgement and discrimination are rife.
Self-Help
Combatting fatphobia and racism to reclaim a space for womxn at the intersection of fat and Black. Fat Black bodies that fall outside dominant constructs of beauty and wellness are subjected to healthism, racism, and misogynoir. The spaces carved out by third-wave feminism and the fat liberation movement fail at true inclusivity and intersectionality; fat Black womxn need to create their own safe spaces and community, instead of tirelessly laboring to educate and push back against dominant groups.
With personal stories and actionable steps, body image activist and educator, Teri Hofford, helps women reconstruct the relationship they have with their body using geodes as a metaphor. Portraying the harmful belief systems, thought processes, trauma, and past experiences connected with how we view and treat our bodies every day as the gritty, grey, and hardened outer shell of a geode, Teri explains how these things keep us from following our hearts and revealing our true, glittery inner selves.
From the creator of Your Fat Friend, an explosive indictment of the systemic and cultural bias facing plus-size people that will move us toward creating an agenda for fat justice. Anti-fatness is everywhere. 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 fat activism, which includes ending legal weight discrimination, giving equal access to health care for large people, increased access to public spaces, and ending anti-fat violence. As she argues, “I did not come to body positivity for self-esteem. I came to it for social justice.”
Novels
Originally published in 1995, this book was republished just this past year. Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award in Fiction, Martha Moody is a speculative western, embracing both ordinary and magical details of women's lives in the old west. It is, also, an old-fashioned love story. In precise language that dips into the sensuous delights of the flesh and the palate, the reader witnesses the love in Amanda Linger's life.
A delightfully fun romantic comedy set in the world of fanfiction, in which a devoted fan goes on an unexpected date with her celebrity crush, who’s secretly posting fanfiction of his own.
Ok, tehcnically that was 15. I had to add one more book.
There are so many more great books. When I have time, I’ll try to create a more comprehensive list. What should I include?
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