
Belly of the Beast
The Politics of Anti-fatness As Anti-blackness
Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, [2021]
Format: Book
Description: xiv, 128 pages ; 22 cm
"Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing. To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma. Da'Shaun Harrison-a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer-offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, foregrounding the state-sanctioned murders of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people in historical analysis. Policing, disenfranchisement, and invisibilizing of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people are pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life. Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they're more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or nontreatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, Blackness, disability, and gender, these abuses are exacerbated. Taking on desirability politics, the limitations of gender, the connection between anti-fatness and carcerality, and the incongruity of "health" and "healthiness" for the Black fat, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness. They offer strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us "fat is bad," and destroying the world as we know it, so the Black fat can inhabit a place not built on their subjugation." -- Publisher's description
Contents:
Beyond self-love -- Pretty ugly : the politics of desire -- Health and the black fat -- Black, fat, and policed -- The war on drugs and the war on obesity -- Meeting gender's end -- Beyond abolition.
Subjects:
African American men -- Social conditions.
Obesity in men -- Social aspects -- United States.
Overweight men -- United States -- Social conditions.
Body image -- Social aspects -- United States.
Masculinity -- United States.
African American men -- Violence against.
African American men -- Social conditions.
Obesity in men -- Social aspects -- United States.
Overweight men -- United States -- Social conditions.
Body image -- Social aspects -- United States.
Masculinity -- United States.
African American men -- Violence against.
ISBN:
9781623175979
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
SOCIAL SCI Race Har | St. Andrews Indoors | Nonfiction | In |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [111]-123) and index.