Lamar Public Library

"String's "Fearing the Black Body" critically examines the concepts of fat phobia and race"--

"'I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.' So begins Chloé Cooper Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor 'pain calculations' into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. But there...

Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly. The sentence was uttered under his breath, in the apartment that my parents, newly married, had bought in Rione Alto, at the top of Via San Giacomo dei Capri. Everything-the spaces of Naples, the blue light of a very cold February, those words-remained fixed. But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story, while...