A review by taratearex
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This was excellent and infuriating. This is a concise history of fat phobia, laying out very clearly how it originated from racism. It also lays out how connected to religion it is, as well as just how manufactured by white women and white men it is and continues to be. It's infuriating to see how little has changed and how we continue to repeat history over and over.
This book is dense and does read somewhat like a history textbook, but it is also clear and concise and lays out the facts so well in only about 200 pages. Because it is more a presentation of the facts, there isn't much analysis so I would recommend reading this in addition to other books on anti-fat bias and racism for more of the analysis part, such as What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat Aubrey Gordon and Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness Da’Shaun Harrison. But this was an excellent book on the history of how we got to where we are now and well worth the read.
I listened to the audiobook in tandem with my physical copy so that I could highlight, this was also helpful as there are a lot of names and dates which I have a harder time with if it's just audiobook.
This book is dense and does read somewhat like a history textbook, but it is also clear and concise and lays out the facts so well in only about 200 pages. Because it is more a presentation of the facts, there isn't much analysis so I would recommend reading this in addition to other books on anti-fat bias and racism for more of the analysis part, such as What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat Aubrey Gordon and Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness Da’Shaun Harrison. But this was an excellent book on the history of how we got to where we are now and well worth the read.
I listened to the audiobook in tandem with my physical copy so that I could highlight, this was also helpful as there are a lot of names and dates which I have a harder time with if it's just audiobook.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia, Racism, and Body shaming
Moderate: Slavery, Sexism, Ableism, and Misogyny