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A review by donasbooks
Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
5.0
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This book is amazing, start to finish, and the narration is equally good.
Trigger warnings below.
I deeply love BIG GIRL by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan for every conceivable feature, from the wonderful style and writing, to the both heart-breaking and yet inspiring narrative, to the utterly charming narration on the arc audiobook I received from NetGalley, performed by Lisa Renee Pitts.
BIG GIRL tells the story of Malaya, an overweight young black girl living in Harlem in the 90s. Time passes around Malaya--she is first 10 in the narrative, then 15, then almost college age, looking at graduation. Everything changes around her--Harlem does, gentrification changes the face of the neighborhood she loves, hiphop does, when Biggie dies, even her home changes as the nature of the relationships inside it changes--her parents marriage, her mother's need for Malaya to lose weight and the fluctuating stridency with which she expresses this need. But one thing that doesn't seem to change for Malaya, no matter what she does, is that she always battles with her weight.
A note about the technical stuff. The Characters in this piece are finely rendered. I could smell them at certain points, they are so well cut. This is because I connected. Not merely because Sullivan describes, but because she describes reliably.
I love the way Sullivan writes about the painful things in life without being grotesquely detailed about them. As someone who has survived trauma, I appreciated this delicacy a great deal.
I won't give away how the narrative resolves, but I will say I think it's a clever, smart ending. Also, in a way, magical, which that time in history needs, a little bit. I know, I was there. This story is well told. Satisfying. It left me with the kind of good feeling that only really complete books can give a person. BIG GIRL is worth the read.
Rating 14 stars
This book is amazing, start to finish, and the narration is equally good.
Trigger warnings below.
I deeply love BIG GIRL by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan for every conceivable feature, from the wonderful style and writing, to the both heart-breaking and yet inspiring narrative, to the utterly charming narration on the arc audiobook I received from NetGalley, performed by Lisa Renee Pitts.
BIG GIRL tells the story of Malaya, an overweight young black girl living in Harlem in the 90s. Time passes around Malaya--she is first 10 in the narrative, then 15, then almost college age, looking at graduation. Everything changes around her--Harlem does, gentrification changes the face of the neighborhood she loves, hiphop does, when Biggie dies, even her home changes as the nature of the relationships inside it changes--her parents marriage, her mother's need for Malaya to lose weight and the fluctuating stridency with which she expresses this need. But one thing that doesn't seem to change for Malaya, no matter what she does, is that she always battles with her weight.
A note about the technical stuff. The Characters in this piece are finely rendered. I could smell them at certain points, they are so well cut. This is because I connected. Not merely because Sullivan describes, but because she describes reliably.
I love the way Sullivan writes about the painful things in life without being grotesquely detailed about them. As someone who has survived trauma, I appreciated this delicacy a great deal.
I won't give away how the narrative resolves, but I will say I think it's a clever, smart ending. Also, in a way, magical, which that time in history needs, a little bit. I know, I was there. This story is well told. Satisfying. It left me with the kind of good feeling that only really complete books can give a person. BIG GIRL is worth the read.
Rating 14 stars