Fat People of Color

BOOKS

• Cox, J. (2020). Fat girls in Black bodies: Creating communities of our own. North Atlantic Books.
• Gentles-Peart, K. (2016). Romance with voluptuousness: Caribbean women and thick bodies in the United States. University of Nebraska Press.
• Harrison, D. L. (2021). Belly of the beast: The politics of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. North Atlantic Books.
• Nolan, S. (2022). Don’t let it get you down: Essays on race, gender, and the body. Simon & Schuster.
• Shaw, A. E. (2006). The embodiment of disobedience: Fat Black women’s unruly political bodies. Lexington Books.
• Strings, S. (2019). Fearing the Black body: The racial origins of fat phobia. NYU Press.

CHAPTERS

• Alexander, S. A. J. (2014). Performing the body: Transgressive doubles, fatness and Blackness. In African diasporic women’s narratives: Politics of resistance, survival, and citizenship (pp. 127-158). University Press of Florida.
• Strings, S. (2020). Fat as a floating signifier: Race, weight, and femininity in the national imaginary. In K. Mason & N. Boero (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the sociology of body and embodiment (pp. 145-163). Oxford University Press.
• Wilson, J. (2023). It isn’t diet culture, it’s white supremacy. In J. Wilson, It’s always been ours: Rewriting the story of Black women’s bodies (pp. 27-46). Hachette Books.

ACADEMIC ARTICLES

• Abou-Rizk, Z., & Rail, G. (2015). “Haram, she’s obese!” Young Lebanese-Canadian women’s discursive constructions of “obesity.” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice, 37(1). https://atlantisjournal.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/2735
• Ashdown-Frank, G., & Joseph, J. (2021). ‘Mind your business and leave my rolls alone’: A case study of fat Black women runners’ decolonial resistance. Societies, 11(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11030095
• Besio, K., & Marusek, S. (2014). Losing it in Hawai’i: Weight Watchers and the paradoxical nature of weight gain and loss. Gender, Place & Culture, 22(6), 851-866. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2014.917281
• Boisvert, J. A. (2012). Native American Indian women, fat studies and feminism. Somatechnics, 2(1), 84-92. https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2012.0042
• Cyr, M., & Riediger, N. (2021). (Re)claiming our bodies using a Two-Eyed Seeing approach: Health-At-Every-Size (HAES®) and Indigenous knowledge. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 112, 493-497. https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-020-00445-9
• Dame-Griff, E. C. (2016). “He’s not heavy, he’s an anchor baby”: Fat children, failed futures, and the threat of Latina/o excess. Fat Studies, 5(2), 156-171. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2016.1144233
• Gillon, A., & Pausé, C. (2021). Kōrero Mōmona, Kōrero ā-Hauora: a Kaupapa Māori and fat studies discussion of fatness, health and healthism. Fat Studies, 11(1), 8-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2021.1906525
• Hernandez, Y. G. (2021). The making of fat erotics: the cultural work and pleasures of gordibuena activists. Fat Studies, 10(3), 237-252. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2021.1907113
• Joseph, R. L. (2009). “Tyra Banks is fat”: Reading (post-)racism and (post-)feminism in the new millennium. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 26(3), 237-254. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295030903015096
• Mollow, A. (2017). Unvictimizable: Toward a fat Black disability studies. African American Review, 50(2), 105-121. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/665367
• Nunn, T. A. (2021). Meghan Markle’s healthy lifestyle in the media: Multiracial exceptionalism and the cult of slimness. Women’s Studies International Forum, 86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2021.102459
• Patterson-Faye, C. J. (2016). ‘I like the way you move’: Theorizing fat, Black and sexy. Sexualities, 19(8), 926-944. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716640731
• Sanders, R. (2017). The color of fat: racializing obesity, recuperating whiteness, and reproducing injustice. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 7(2), 287-304. https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2017.1354039
• Senyonga, M., & Luna, C. (2021). “If I’m shinin’, everybody gonna shine”: centering Black fat women and femmes within body and fat positivity. Fat Studies, 10(3), 268-282. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2021.1907112
• Shaw, A. (2006). The other side of the looking glass: The marginalization of fatness and Blackness in the construction of gender identity. Social Semiotics, 15(2), 143-152. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330500154725
• Smalls, K. A. (2021). Fat, Black, and ugly: The semiotic production of prodigious femininities. Transforming Anthropology, 29(1), 12-28. https://doi.org/10.1111/traa.12208
• Stewart, T. J., & Breeden, R. L. (2021). “Feeling good as hell”: Black women and the nuances of fat resistance. Fat Studies, 10(3), 221-236. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2021.1907112
• Stoneman, S. (2012). Ending fat stigma: Precious, visual culture, and anti-obesity in the “fat moment.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 34(3-4), 197-207. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2012.687297
• Strings, S. (2015). Obese Black women as “social dead weight”: Reinventing the “diseased Black woman.” Signs, 41(1), 107-130. https://doi.org/10.1086/681773
• Sullivan, M. J. (2013). Fat mutha: Hip hop’s queer corpulent poetics. Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, 2(2), 200-213. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/163/article/524206
• Thompson, C. (2015). Neoliberalism, soul food, and the weight of Black women. Feminist Media Studies, 15(5), 794-812. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.1003390
• Vincent, L. (2016). Fat in a time of slim: The reinscription of race in the framing of fat desirability in post-apartheid South Africa. Sexualities, 19(8), 914-925. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716640730
• Warbrick, I., Came, H., & Dickson, A. (2018). The shame of fat shaming in public health: moving past racism to embrace indigenous solutions. Public Health, 176, 128-132. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0033350618302804
• Williams, A. A. (2017). Fat people of color: Emergent intersectional discourse online. Social Sciences, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010015
• Williams, S. (2021). Watch out for the big girls: Black plus-sized content creators creating space and amplifying visibility in digital spaces. Feminist Media Studies, 21(8), 1360-1370. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.2004195

DISSERTATIONS/THESES

• Andrew, J. L. B. (2018). “Put together”: Black women’s body stories in Toronto, (ad)dressing identity and the threads that bind [Doctoral dissertation, York University]. Yorkspace. https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/95bb025e-a1c4-4fd6-a8ca-5d44182caacb/content
• Vandael, L. (2021). Making the connection between anti-fat bias and racism: A discourse analysis of contemporary fat activism [Master’s thesis, Universiteit Gent]. https://libstore.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG01/003/007/098/RUG01-003007098_2021_0001_AC.pdf

POPULAR PRESS

• Greyton, W. (2023, September 30). Evolving out of body positivity and centering anti-fat justice. Afropunk. https://afropunk.com/2023/09/the-death-of-body-positivity-evolving-how-we-talk-about-fatphobia/
• Monroe, D. (2018, October 22). Meat on dem bones: Confronting fat antagonism and diet culture in Black beauty politics. Everyday feminism. https://everydayfeminism.com/2018/10/meat-on-dem-bones-confronting-fat-antagonism-and-diet-culture-in-black-beauty-politics/
• Purkiss, A. (2017, April 1). (Re)examining fat stigma through Black women’s history. Food, fatness and fitness: Critical perspectives. https://foodfatnessfitness.com/2017/04/01/reexamining-fat-stigma-black-womens-history/
• Strings, S., & Bacon, L. (2020, June 4). The racist roots of fighting obesity. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-racist-roots-of-fighting-obesity2/
• Yip, I. (2024, July 31). How Chinese American women are at the intersection of the pressure to be thin. NBC news. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/asian-american-women-family-culture-pressure-body-size-rcna163719
• Zaragoza, A. (2024, January 5). Diet culture tricks us into thinking our cultural foods aren’t healthy. The LA times. https://www.latimes.com/delos/story/2024-01-05/diet-culture-food-weight-health