georgia29's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body shaming
Minor: Self harm and Medical trauma
witmol's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
Neither food memoirs nor body issue memoirs appeal to me ordinarily, but being familiar with Sam van Zweden's assured writing prior to acquiring this book certainly helped this onto the top of the to-be-read pile(s). Split into 39 chapters of varying length, this is not quite a book of essays, not quite a memoir, but morsels of thought that guide the reader from topic to topic – from family and heritage to foodie culture and body issues – much like a degustation.
While familiar with the body positive movement, I was not prepared for small revelations throughout that made me rethink what I thought I knew about eating and the body. Near the beginning is a description of autophagy by octopuses, used as a metaphor; a little further on is a discussion of a study on how high exposure to thin bodies being happy (for e.g. in advertising) can make fat people miserable. Van Zweden takes the research and makes it personal in a way that sticks, that no only makes you rethink but rewrite your own body.
There's a lot of tenderness here, evident in the loving way she writes about her family, particularly her grandparents, but also the other kind of tenderness, the sensitivity that comes from exposure to pain. Both are important to understand this work. The first is really about food as connection to family and to memory, which is really not so different to other food memoirs out there. The second is about having a body that takes up space that some people seem to believe shouldn't. A pair of incidents illustrates this: she writes about how two health professionals, a psychiatrist and a remedial masseur, fixate on her fatness, the former contributing to a stalling of her mental health plan. These serve to reveal how a fat person cannot escape the lens of fatness, which becomes particularly harmful in a medical context. It is then compounded in a much more public manner when a man on a tram calls her fatness out one day with the kicker that this is a man she regularly sees on the tram. The punishment for being fat appears to be the inescapability of being fat in public.
While some of the subjects may be considered 'raw', the work is not: it is marinated in careful rumination, research and intimate portraits. It's hard to say I 'enjoyed' it as it is both challenging and often dark, but I will say it closes on a hopeful note, that there is a way to make peace with our relationships to food, family and fatness, no matter where we start.
(This reviewer would also like to 'come out as' fat.)
While familiar with the body positive movement, I was not prepared for small revelations throughout that made me rethink what I thought I knew about eating and the body. Near the beginning is a description of autophagy by octopuses, used as a metaphor; a little further on is a discussion of a study on how high exposure to thin bodies being happy (for e.g. in advertising) can make fat people miserable. Van Zweden takes the research and makes it personal in a way that sticks, that no only makes you rethink but rewrite your own body.
There's a lot of tenderness here, evident in the loving way she writes about her family, particularly her grandparents, but also the other kind of tenderness, the sensitivity that comes from exposure to pain. Both are important to understand this work. The first is really about food as connection to family and to memory, which is really not so different to other food memoirs out there. The second is about having a body that takes up space that some people seem to believe shouldn't. A pair of incidents illustrates this: she writes about how two health professionals, a psychiatrist and a remedial masseur, fixate on her fatness, the former contributing to a stalling of her mental health plan. These serve to reveal how a fat person cannot escape the lens of fatness, which becomes particularly harmful in a medical context. It is then compounded in a much more public manner when a man on a tram calls her fatness out one day with the kicker that this is a man she regularly sees on the tram. The punishment for being fat appears to be the inescapability of being fat in public.
While some of the subjects may be considered 'raw', the work is not: it is marinated in careful rumination, research and intimate portraits. It's hard to say I 'enjoyed' it as it is both challenging and often dark, but I will say it closes on a hopeful note, that there is a way to make peace with our relationships to food, family and fatness, no matter where we start.
(This reviewer would also like to 'come out as' fat.)
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body shaming, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt
Minor: Medical trauma and Panic attacks/disorders
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