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.
Helping social justice leaders, organizations, & movements realize their full power. A world free of oppression means practicing liberation inside & out. 💓
What we're reading in honor of #BlackHistoryMonth – Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun L. Harrison https://t.co/aUOTFPeTSy
@LeftOfBlack, now in its 13th season, is a video podcast hosted by @DukeAAAS Chair Dr. Mark Anthony Neal (@NewBlackMan) and produced by @fhi_duke #BlackStudies
'Vox’s Anna North talks with Da'Shaun Harrison, the activist, author, and 2022 Lambda Literary Award recipient for their book Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. The Racist Origins of Fat Phobia with Da'Shaun Harrison https://t.co/0NfqEPKABI https://t.co/WvFpFmdjcV
Black-led, Southern abolitionist media. We disrupt narratives that keep power in the hands of the few & amplify grassroots, liberation movements.
From last year: Read Scalawag editor-at-large and author of ‘Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness,’ @DaShaunLH in conversation about “the Black fat” and the nonbinary, trans-masculine experience. https://t.co/DRSpBRUgFM
"Da'Shaun Harrison is an insightful visionary, world-builder, and ingenious writer who brings us into deeper understandings and frameworks of the intersections of anti-Blackness and anti-fatness. Belly of the Beast brings us closer to ourselves because it brings us closer to the truth--that anti-Blackness
is the foundation to how violence shapes our relationships to our bodies and each other. Harrison not only intervenes in the terror of white supremacist paradigms but develops the tools to imagine and build a new world. Belly of the Beast eats, and it leaves no crumbs."
--Hunter Shackelford, author of You Might Die for This
"I am continually blown away by Da'Shaun's ability as a writer to wrestle so deeply and expertly with questions many of us would never even think to ask--whether they be about our world, our politics, our selves, or our bodies. Every page challenges us to expand our imagination and reconstruct the ways we think, talk, and theorize about fatness, Blackness, gender, health, desire, abolition, and more. Belly of the Beast is a gift and a groundbreaker."
--Sherronda J. Brown, editor-in-chief of Wear Your Voice magazine