Roxane Gay addresses the experience of living in a body that she calls 'wildly undisciplined.' She casts an insightful and critical eye over her childhood, teens, and twenties -- including the devastating act of violence that was a turning point at age 12 -- and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. With candor, vulnerability, and authority, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when...

Sixteen-year-old Willowdean wants to prove to everyone in her small Texas town that she is more than just a fat girl, so, while grappling with her feelings for a co-worker who is clearly attracted to her, Will and some other misfits prepare to compete in the beauty pageant her mother runs.

Victoria Dawson was a chubby little girl born to slender L.A. parents. Her father belittled her about her body and she was a disappointment to her mother; neither acknowledged her academic achievements. Her perfect younger sister is about to be married to a narcissistic man, just like their father, and Victoria worries about her sister's future happiness. As the wedding draws near, a chance encounter, an act of stunning betrayal, and a family confrontation...

All her life, Mitchell had eaten lustily and mindlessly. Food was her babysitter, her best friend, her confidant, and it provided a refuge from her fractured family. But when she stepped on the scale on her twentieth birthday and it registered a shocking 268 pounds, she knew she had to change the way she thought about food and herself: her life was at stake. She tells us how she discovered balance in an off-kilter world, finding beauty in acceptance...

Clifton College has hired Woody to find out who has "rushed Charles Haycock into shuffling off his mortal coil." A conceited old bigot whose love of Tennyson was matched only by his hatred of women, Professor Haycock took a sip of a cocktail that was equal parts retsina and digitalin. When the police receive a letter blaming one of Haycock's English department colleagues, the department decides to do its own sorting of skeletons and asks Woody to...

Alice and Daphne, both successful working mothers, both accomplished and seemingly steady, harbor the same secret: obsession with their weight overshadows concerns about their children, husbands, work--and everything else of importance in their lives. Scales terrify them. Daphne, plump in a family of model-thin women, learned at her mother's knee that only slimness earns admiration. Alice, break-up skinny when she met her husband, risks losing her...

Follows Lizzie, a young woman growing up in Mississauga, as she fights her way from fat to thin, but who still, even as a married adult woman, sees herself as a fat girl.