Limited by Body Habitus: An American Fat Story
Winner of the 2018 Nonfiction Prize, selected by Daisy Hernández
Limited by Body Habitus: An American Fat Story
Winner of the 2018 Nonfiction Prize, selected by Daisy Hernández
About the Book
Praise for Limited By Body Habitus: An American Fat Story
Limited By Body Habitus is a searing and honest memoir that made me reconsider everything I thought I knew about the “obesity epidemic” in the United States. Jennifer Renee Blevins masterfully brings together cultural criticism, hard numbers and her own family’s story to reveal the extent to which the obesity epidemic continues to be manufactured and misunderstood. This is no manifesto, however. Blevins takes herself to task, too, and readers are left with a poignant memoir about a father who becomes a best friend, a family that is forever altered by a medical crisis, and a daughter who wonders if, as Blevins writes: “our bodies remember what we do to them.”
—Daisy HernándesLimited By Body Habitus: An American Fat Story offers a sobering journey into America’s obsession with dieting and our outsized fear of the hazards of “obesity.” In her beautifully crafted memoir, Jennifer Renee Blevins shares the story of her own struggles with body image, and her father’s medical horror story, with a clear-eyed fury.
—Dinty W. Moore
Jennifer Renee Blevins holds a BA in English and Theatre and an MA in English from Wake Forest University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina, where she is a PhD candidate in American Literature. Limited by Body Habitus is her first book.
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