A review by thejuliebookshelf
Queer Body Power: Finding Your Body Positivity by Essie Dennis

Dennis is a queer and disabled writer, artist, and content creator.  This book builds on their work advocating for body positivity and self-acceptance in the lgbtq+ community.  Conversations about body image and mental health can be so general, which is fine, but they also need to sometimes be more nuanced and specific.  That’s where QUEER BODY POWER comes in.

 

For this collection of essays, Dennis conducted interviews with a racially diverse group of lgbtq+ people across gender and sexuality spectrums in order to represent a broad range of voices, identities, and experiences.  

 

I think that this book is a good step in the right direction – a good start, because there is no way that this book could have been comprehensive.  Our lives are intersectional and our bodies are intersectionally experienced.  The forces impacting queer Black bodies in this world – especially in the USA/Western context of this book – are not the same as those that queer white bodies experience, for example.

 

I kept finding myself wanting… more?  I wanted analysis.  I wanted theory.  I wanted Dennis to take the stories that she shares and draw them out, compare them, contrast them.  This book is more of an anthropological collecting of experiences – which is valuable and interesting in and of itself, but the misalignment of my expectations definitely impacted my reading experience.

 

I bought this book to read with BBBC Haus many months ago, but it took me a long time to get through it.