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Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun Harrison
1 review
wetdirtreads's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Belly of the Beast is an incredibly concise, yet deeply thorough and nuanced exploration of how anti-fatness as anti-Blackness is constructed & violently enforced. Harrison focuses on how desirability politics, healthism, hyper-sexualisation & in/visibility are deployed under white supremacy (& specifically anti-Blackness) to produce & impose anti-fatness as anti-Blackness.
Immaculately woven through this investigation is an analysis of how anti-fatness as anti-Blackness manifests across diverse experiences of gender, transness, and disability. The result is a refreshing, much-needed & well overdue fill for so many gaps in existing fat literature.
I really can't overstate how impressive it is for a 109-page book to cover so much ground without sacrificing any complexity or integrity. I’ll admit, when I first started the book, I felt a bit unsure about the in-depth explanation of sociological concepts & key terms. I wondered whether it was useful, or just academic waffle. I quickly found, though, that it was not only useful, but imperative to the book’s accessibility, nuance, & simultaneous huge scope & brevity.
There is no one I wouldn’t recommend this book to. However, I think it’s a particularly important read for white fat folks whose fat activism lacks a racially aware & critical lens. And I don’t just mean awareness of how fatphobia impacts Black folks differently. I mean how fatphobia is a direct product of anti-Blackness that largely impacts people based on their perceived proximity to Blackness, and thus, perceived distance from humanness.
I am so grateful for this book. It is a generous offering that provides an opportunity for fat studies and fat literature to steer in a crucial direction. Belly of the Beast, along with other critical fat Black texts, also provides fertile ground for other localised contexts and experiences to be thoroughly and appropriately engaged. I would love to see the wisdom of this book applied to other Black contexts beyond Turtle Island (or the so-called united states/north america).
(Review initially posted on Instagram)
Immaculately woven through this investigation is an analysis of how anti-fatness as anti-Blackness manifests across diverse experiences of gender, transness, and disability. The result is a refreshing, much-needed & well overdue fill for so many gaps in existing fat literature.
I really can't overstate how impressive it is for a 109-page book to cover so much ground without sacrificing any complexity or integrity. I’ll admit, when I first started the book, I felt a bit unsure about the in-depth explanation of sociological concepts & key terms. I wondered whether it was useful, or just academic waffle. I quickly found, though, that it was not only useful, but imperative to the book’s accessibility, nuance, & simultaneous huge scope & brevity.
There is no one I wouldn’t recommend this book to. However, I think it’s a particularly important read for white fat folks whose fat activism lacks a racially aware & critical lens. And I don’t just mean awareness of how fatphobia impacts Black folks differently. I mean how fatphobia is a direct product of anti-Blackness that largely impacts people based on their perceived proximity to Blackness, and thus, perceived distance from humanness.
I am so grateful for this book. It is a generous offering that provides an opportunity for fat studies and fat literature to steer in a crucial direction. Belly of the Beast, along with other critical fat Black texts, also provides fertile ground for other localised contexts and experiences to be thoroughly and appropriately engaged. I would love to see the wisdom of this book applied to other Black contexts beyond Turtle Island (or the so-called united states/north america).
(Review initially posted on Instagram)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Police brutality, Racism, Death, Fatphobia, and Gun violence
Moderate: Genocide, Medical trauma, Child abuse, Hate crime, Sexual assault, Ableism, Murder, Slavery, and Transphobia
Minor: Colonisation, Dysphoria, and Religious bigotry
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