I expected Thick’s second essay, “In the Name of Beauty,” to be a body-positivity panegyric about the intersection of Blackness, thickness, and womanhood. Readers can enjoy the essays one at a time or all at once-each features a fresh and unique thesis, but they all tie back to the same themes, forming a coherent whole. It is the college lecture you always wanted-a hybrid of personal narrative and academia, teaching you a whole lot without ever boring you. Easy to digest yet smart and topical, Thick is an excellent resource for writers and a thoughtful, evocative read for everyone. In this work of quasi-auto-theory, McMillan Cottom parses stories from her life into sharp essays, weaving personal moments seamlessly with cultural metanarratives and critical theory. Thick occupies a wonderful, liminal space between academic text and memoir. McMillan Cottom pushes against this to make room for the women who yearn to grow but are encouraged to shrink: “thick is not just about bodies, but about capaciousness, about being a black woman who ‘thinks for a living’-who is paid, and well, published, and often.” thick where I should have been thin, more when I should have been less.” This can be read both literally and figuratively and offers a delicious space for rebellion against prescriptions for women (and especially Black women) to take up less space physically (i.e., thin culture) and metaphorically for women to shrink their personalities, their talent, their wit, their words, and their bodies in order to make room for the bigness of men. When I would not or could not shrink, people made sure that I knew I had erred…. In the book’s first essay, “Thick,” McMillan Cottom writes, “I was, like many young women, expected to be small so that boys could expand and white girls could shine. The lens through which I considered thickness was narrow, and Tressie McMillan Cottom was about to teach me there was so much more to being “thick” than just the amount of space your physical frame takes up.

Foolishly, I didn’t even think about thick minds, thick personalities, thick topics. I dove into Thick: and Other Essays (The New Press) expecting a body positive paean, an ode to thick bodies.

Thick essays