YoungGiftedandFat An Autoethnography of Size, Sexuality, and Privilege Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives Series

YoungGiftedandFat is a critical autoethnography of "performing thin"? on the stage and in life. Sharrell D. Luckett?s story of weight loss and gain and playing the (beautiful, desirable, thin) leading lady showcases an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to issues of weight and self-esteem, performance, race, and gender. Sharrell structures her project with creative text, interviews, testimony, journal entries, dialogues, monologues, and deep theorizing through and about the abundance of flesh.

She explores the politics of Black culture, and particularly the intersections of her lived and embodied experiences. Her body and body transformation becomes a critical praxis to evidence fat as a feminist issue, fat as a Black-girl-woman issue, and fat as an ideological construct that is as much on the brain as it is on the body. YoungGiftedandFat is useful to any area of research or course offering taking up questions of size politics at the intersections of race and sexuality.

Foreword Bryant Keith Alexander

Acknowledgements

Before Pic

Introduction: Contextualizing the Conundrum

Chapter 1. Touched

Talk 'Fat' Session: Say it ain't so…daddy issues?

Chapter 2. Disappearing Acts

Chapter 3. Passing Strange

Talk 'Fat' Session: Fractured

Chapter 4. Maintenance

Chapter 5. Weighted Loss

Talk 'Fat' Session: Staging Life

Chapter 6. "YoungGiftedandFat" – (The Play)

Chapter 7. Fat Girl Futurity

After Pic

References

Index

Sharrell D. Luckett is Assistant Professor of Theatre & Performance Studies at Muhlenberg College. Her literary and embodied research is situated in Performance Studies, African American Studies, acting/directing theory, and Fat Studies.