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A review by ivanainthecity
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
One of my majors in college (I graduated almost a decade ago 👵🏼) was sociology, and what I love the most about it is its ability to make us rethink everything we think we know about the world around us—everything we take for granted and seem to just accept, including our assumptions and experiences. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s provocative book, THICK, made me fall in love with sociology all over again... even though—and BECAUSE—it made me feel deeply uncomfortable (in a good way).
THICK is an unflinching collection of personal and sociological essays that make use of ~thick description/ethnography~but also defy categorization (so much so that Tressie even calls her writing style ~slutty~ 🙃). Tressie explores a wide array of issues, including gender, pop culture, and capitalism, through the lens of Black feminism. These essays contain a rare mix of insightful analyses and evocative writing—including gorgeous extended metaphors —while also being extremely readable, nuanced, and layered.
Her essay on beauty was a standout for me. In it, she highlights the role white supremacy and capitalism/consumption feminism have had on United Statesian notions of beauty... and stands by her assertion that she is ugly: “When I say I am unattractive or ugly, I am not internalizing the dominant culture’s assessment of me. I am naming what has been done to me. And signaling who did it.” Her boldness unnerved me and pushed me to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
More than anything, I love how Tressie legitimizes the personal essay as a way for her to speak her truth and to pave the way for other Black women to continue to do the same:
“If anyone ever reads me and finds it useful, as I hope you do, may doing so spark a gold rush, for Black women writers and institutions that will pay them and protect them. I hope we build a body politic so thick with contradictions and nuance and humanity and Blackness (because Blackness is humanity), that no Black woman public intellectual has to fix her feet ever again to walk this world.”
THICK is an unflinching collection of personal and sociological essays that make use of ~thick description/ethnography~but also defy categorization (so much so that Tressie even calls her writing style ~slutty~ 🙃). Tressie explores a wide array of issues, including gender, pop culture, and capitalism, through the lens of Black feminism. These essays contain a rare mix of insightful analyses and evocative writing—including gorgeous extended metaphors —while also being extremely readable, nuanced, and layered.
Her essay on beauty was a standout for me. In it, she highlights the role white supremacy and capitalism/consumption feminism have had on United Statesian notions of beauty... and stands by her assertion that she is ugly: “When I say I am unattractive or ugly, I am not internalizing the dominant culture’s assessment of me. I am naming what has been done to me. And signaling who did it.” Her boldness unnerved me and pushed me to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
More than anything, I love how Tressie legitimizes the personal essay as a way for her to speak her truth and to pave the way for other Black women to continue to do the same:
“If anyone ever reads me and finds it useful, as I hope you do, may doing so spark a gold rush, for Black women writers and institutions that will pay them and protect them. I hope we build a body politic so thick with contradictions and nuance and humanity and Blackness (because Blackness is humanity), that no Black woman public intellectual has to fix her feet ever again to walk this world.”