Thick: And Other Essays (Unabridged)
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4.6 • 38 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Recommended by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Book Riot, BuzzFeed, Bust, LitHub, The Millions, HelloGiggles, and UrbanDaddy
“The author you need to read now.” (Chicago Tribune)
“To say this collection is transgressive, provocative, and brilliant is simply to tell you the truth.” (Roxane Gay, author of Hunger and Bad Feminist)
Smart, humorous, and strikingly original essays by one of “America’s most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time.” (Rebecca Traister)
In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom - award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed - embraces her venerated role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society.
Ideas and identity fuse effortlessly in this vibrant collection that on bookshelves is just as at home alongside Rebecca Solnit and bell hooks as it is beside Jeff Chang and Janet Mock. It also fills an important void on those very shelves: a modern Black American feminist voice waxing poetic on self and society, serving up a healthy portion of clever prose and southern aphorisms as she covers everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies. Thick speaks fearlessly to a range of topics and is far more genre-bending than a typical compendium of personal essays.
An intrepid intellectual force hailed by the likes of Trevor Noah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Oprah, Tressie McMillan Cottom is “among America’s most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time” (Rebecca Traister). This stunning debut collection - in all its intersectional glory - mines for meaning in places many of us miss, and reveals precisely how the political, the social, and the personal are almost always one and the same.
Customer Reviews
Read for group book club
If you identify as a black woman AND relate to Tressie’s personal narrative I can see how you could possibly enjoy this book. If both statements are not true, you may find this book exclusive. After disagreeing with so many statements she made while listening to the book, I resolved that I would listen for nuggets of goodness because, as an intelligent woman, I can do that. I can take the thoughtful, researched or enlightened pieces of content and incorporate that into my world view/life, whatever and leave the useless and biased information presented as facts on the audiobook track.
Regarding her opinions presented as facts, I find it dangerous to continue to push a false narrative that puts oneself positioned against another, as “the other”. Tressie is well versed in divisive writing and makes assumptions after assumptions about white women, black men and other groups of people.
I read this book as a part of a book club but wouldn’t financially support this author in the future. It’s clear that the author thinks I am “the other” and who wants to support someone financially who puts them in box and judges them? There are enough people in the world that judge me. I do not need to pay someone to make false statements about groups I identify with and judge me.