Title: Big Girl
Author: Mecca Jamilia Sullivan
Publication Date: July 22, 2022
Genre:YA/Coming of Age
Rating 💥💥💥💥💥
About The Book
Malaya Clondon hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings in the church’s stuffy basement community center. A quietly inquisitive eight-year-old struggling to suppress her insatiable longing, she would much rather paint alone in her bedroom, or sneak out with her father for a sampling of Harlem’s forbidden street foods.
For Malaya, the pressures of going to a predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are compounded by the high expectations passed down over generations from her sharp-tongued grandmother and her mother, Nyela, a painfully proper professor struggling to earn tenure at a prestigious university. But their relentless prescriptions—fad diets of cottage-cheese and sugar-free Jell-O, high-cardio African dance classes, endless doctors’ appointments—don’t work on Malaya.
As Malaya comes of age in a rapidly gentrifying 1990s Harlem, she strains to understand “ladyness” and fit neatly within the suffocating confines of a so-called “femininity” that holds no room for her body. She finds solace in the lyrical riffs of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, and in the support of her sensitive father, Percy; still, tensions at home mount as rapidly as Malaya’s weight. Nothing seems to help—until a family tragedy forces her to finally face the source of her hunger on her own terms.
Exquisitely compassionate and clever, Big Girl is “filled with everyday people who, in Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s gifted hands, show us the love and struggle of what it means to be inside bodies that don’t always fit with the outside world” (Jacqueline Woodson). In tracing the perils and pleasures of the inheritance that comes with being born, Sullivan pushes boundaries and creates an unforgettable portrait of Black womanhood in America
My Review
Wow. This was another amazing read that took me a bit of time to adequately find the right words to say. Part of Malaya's story was mine growing up as well, being extremely overweight as a child and teen. And being only a few years older than her during the time period of the story, a well of emotions swallowed me through out the story. Many times I had to fight back tears as certain memories flooded my mind. This was such an emotional and powerful read and beautifully written. It also took me back to a time in music that changed my life. I always wondered what it would be like to grow up in Harlem during this time period, and now I have an inkling. This is a story I will soon not forget and I will surely be looking forward to reading future works by this author
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