Over 90% of women (maybe even more!) hate their bodies and would give up things they love (mental health, quality of life, and more) in order to have the ‘perfect’ body. Children as young as eight (maybe even younger!) go on diets. The majority of Americans are considered ‘obese’ or ‘overweight’ and yet still are systematically taught to hate our bodies, to fix them, to constantly be striving to try the new diet or drug to be smaller, to be less than.
The memoir I’ve been working on seeks to explore the impacts of anti-fat bias, inequities in access to eating disorder (ED) treatment, and how siblings internalize grief that manifests in divergent ways.
In the book proposal I wrote, I listed 10 books that could sit on the same shelf as mine— in theme, tone, subject, style. (Some of the books on this list are a bit older.) It’s a challenging task so this list of books is not quite fully a fit, as I’m still figuring out if this is an eating disorder memoir, a recovery memoir, a book about trauma, or, perhaps, the love between two sisters that transmutes trauma, geography, and, well… bodies.
(In case you missed it, here are my previous posts about 10 books to read by and for fat folks (and their allies), as well as 10 writer-activist books to read.)
So if you’re thinking about, or even writing about, eating disorder recovery, fat bodies, dieting bodies, wellness culture, binge eating disorder, and the like, here are 10 memoirs (and some essay collections) that might be of interest (in no particular order).
Fat Girl: A True Story by Judith Moore. What struck me about this book, at least the paperback edition I have, is the photo of a fat girl in a bathing suit on the cover. It felt like I was looking at one of my old photos. This book was published in 2006 and thus the language around it jarred me a bit. I read it as a narrator who was hard on herself, critical of her own size, but trying to laugh it off with the people who were cruel to her. It’s not the style that I’m writing, but I think I am so thirsty for stories like these, that we can use all the stories we can get.
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher. This 2006 memoir was the first book I read about eating disorders and I felt somehow so seen at the time, even though my experience with ED was very different and I didn’t realize I had one at that time. It would be a decade later until I was officially diagnosed. I haven’t read Wasted since and I think I’ve changed a lot about my sensitivities to details about ED and I suspect much of it could be triggering for those still struggling.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. Many people have suggested this book for me to read, and I have. In fact, right when it came out, I was one of the first lined up, eager to read about Gay’s experience as a fat person with ED. I appreciate the efforts and vulnerabilities made in this 2017 memoir, though admit that there were parts of it that felt rushed to me (a worry I have about my own work too).
Empty by Susan Burton. This memoir came out in the summer of the 2020 pandemic and I remember reading it in my apartment during bouts of my own relapsing into disordered thinking. This book is one of the more poignant ones that accurately go into the experience of living with Binge Eating Disorder (BED), though if I recall, still centers on ED treatment facilities (and thus privileged access to care) that many do not get. (My own book doesn’t have this narrative, which is why I think a lot about what kind of book mine is; there is no neat line, no “I’m recovered. It’s over.”)
It Was Me All Along by Andi Mitchell. I hesitate to include this 2015 book. While I resonated with many of Mitchell’s experiences of body and eating shame, the narrative arc of this book is a weight loss journey. She is happy by the book’s end (spoiler alert) because, it seems, she finally lost the weight (and of course, finally accepted herself/got a boyfriend/dream job/vacation of a lifetime etc). That said, I think it’s a book that attempts to explore how we’re socialized to be on a quest for thinness and the awful way people judge and treat fat folks. She recounts the ways in which she was treated as a fat person (unkind) and the social acceptance of a thin person (kind). The sentence level writing is accessible and makes it a quick read.
Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm by Emmeline Clein. Recommended by Emma Copley Eisenberg, Dead Weight is a “personal and culture look at the dark underbelly of Western beauty standards and the lethal culture of disordered eating they’ve wrought.” Clein looks at her own struggles, historical figures and pop culture, plus it’s blurbed by folks like Melissa Febos, Kate Zembrano, Leslie Jamison and Jordan Kisner. Released in February 2024, I’m bummed I only learned about it now and have yet to read (though have just ordered it and can’t wait!).
Designated Fat Girl by Jennifer Joyner. This 2010 memoir is what I’d call a ‘cautionary tale’ in that I mean it demonizes fat people (and attempts to use fatphobic scare tactics) in its language choices (like the ‘desperate’ and ‘obese’ narrator was ‘disgusted’ with herself). I think weight/ body image/ ED books are such a complex genre and I admire the courage to write about it, but I don’t like that this one is marketed as a weight loss narrative in which the only solution is surgery and that this means happiness. The book description might give you a better idea: “a brutally honest memoir of life as an obese woman—the pain, humiliation . . . and hope. Joyner was slowly killing herself with food. She didn’t know what to fear more: dying, or knowing that she was causing her own death. She was powerless to stop. She weighed [redacted] pounds. She had uncontrolled diabetes and high blood pressure. She’d lost jobs and friendships, and her marriage was hanging by a thread. She disgusted herself. She couldn’t even attempt a sex life. She’d never felt so desperate or alone. It is a painfully honest account of Joyner’s experiences as an obese woman—of always having to buy new clothes that fit, pretending to order for two people at drive-through fast-food joints, the constant cycle of binge and regret, not fitting into her wedding dress, the cruel comments. It’s a story about her decision to have gastric bypass surgery and the resulting complications. In the end, it is also a story of recovery and survival.” (There’s also a 2008 book The Amazing Adventures of Diet Girl by Shauna Reid.)
Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by Dr. Kate Manne. This book weaves personal experience with research to “expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to combat it. Over the last several decades, implicit bias has waned in every category, from race to sexual orientation, except one: body size. Manne examines how anti-fatness operates—how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person’s attractiveness, fortitude, and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression. Fatphobia is responsible for wage gaps, medical neglect, and poor educational outcomes.” Like many of us, Manne obsessively recorded her weight and partook in extreme, unhealthy dieting in an effort to evade the bullying she faced because of her size. Roxane Gay calls this book “an elegant, fierce, and profound argument for fighting fat oppression in ourselves, our communities, and our culture.”
Limited by Body Habitus: An American Fat Story by Jennifer Blevins. This 2019 memoir describes generations of body dissatisfaction (Blevins started hating her body at age 6 ) as well as family diets to target “problem areas.” Dinty Moore says it’s a “sobering journey into America’s obsession with dieting and our outsized fear of the hazards of ‘obesity.’ In her beautifully crafted memoir, Blevins shares the story of her own struggles with body image, and her father’s medical horror story, with a clear-eyed fury.”
More, Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing and the Lust for ‘Enough’ by Emma Specter. Full disclosure: I haven’t read this book yet. It just came out this year but friend (and subscriber—hi!— Krista recommended it. The title alone is intriguing and Specter writes for Vogue, a glossy magazine that often glamorizes thin bodies and demonizes fat ones. Described as “tender, funny, angry, and sharp as hell by Helen Rosner, this book blends memoir, reportage, and in-depth interviews. Here’s a description: “Millions of us use restrictive diets, intermittent fasting, IV therapies, and Ozempic abuse to shrink until we are sample-size acceptable. But for the 30 million Americans who live with eating disorders, it isn’t just about less. More, Please is a chronicle of a lifelong fixation with food—its power to soothe, to comfort, to offer a fleeting escape from the outside world—as well as an examination of the ways in which compulsory thinness, diet culture, and the seductive promise of ‘wellness’ have resulted in warping countless Americans’ relationship with healthy eating.”
Prompt: What aspects of memoir, or personal essays, appeal to you and why? If scenes are more engaging, do you find analytical criticism relevant, or vice versa?
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Christina Berke is a Los Angeles based writer working on WELL, BODY, a memoir about eating disorders, body image, and childhood trauma. An excerpt of this was Longlisted with Disquiet Literary International. A former Managing Editor for Black Mountain Institute’s award-winning literary magazine, Witness, she currently reads for Split Lip Magazine. Find out more at www.christinaberke.com.