Our inaugural Fat Forward Book Club meeting was incredible! It was such a joy to meet with everyone and discuss our first book. We held a poll to determine our July pick (which is currently a perk just for Discord members that will eventually be just for $5+ Fat Forward Pillar subscribers!) and following the vote...

Our July book is Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde!

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents' native Grenada. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. On she stumbles through teenage hardships -- suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone -- until she emerges into happiness: an oasis of friendship in Washington Heights, an affair in a dirty factory in Connecticut, and, finally, a journey down to the heat of Mexico, discovering sex, tenderness, and suppers of hot tamales and cold milk. This is Audre Lorde's story. It is a rapturous, life-affirming tale of independence, love, work, strength, sexuality and change, rich with poetry and fierce emotional power.

"Poet and author Audre Lorde used her writing to shine light on her experience of the world as a Black lesbian woman and later, as a mother and person suffering from cancer. A prominent member of the women’s and LGBTQ rights movements, her writings called attention to the multifaceted nature of identity and the ways in which people from different walks of life could grow stronger together.

"Audrey Geraldine Lorde was born on February 18, 1934 to Frederic and Linda Belmar Lorde, immigrants from Grenada. She was the youngest of three sisters and grew up in Manhattan. As a child, Lorde dropped the 'y' from her first name to become Audre.

...

"Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1977, Lorde found that the ordeals of cancer treatment and mastectomy were shrouded in silence for women, and found them even further isolating as a Black lesbian woman. Lorde felt that the narratives of coping and healing she did encounter were designed solely for white, heterosexual women. In an effort to combat this silence and to foster connection with other lesbians and women of color facing the same struggle, Lorde offered a raw portrait of her own pain, suffering, reflection, and hope in The Cancer Journals (1980). The book won the American Library Association’s Gay Caucus Book of the Year Award for 1981 and became a classic work of illness narrative.

"Lorde’s advocacy on behalf of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community continued outside her literary career as well. In 1979, she was a prominent speaker at the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. In 1981, with Barbara Smith and several other writers, Lorde founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. Kitchen Table was devoted to promoting feminists of color and their writings. Lorde was also a founding member of Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa, an organization that advocated on behalf of women living under apartheid." - Mariana Brandman, National Women's History Month Predoctoral Fellow in Women’s History (2020-22). Read her full biography of Lorde here.

Fat Forward Book Club will meet Friday, July 18 at 8 p.m. ET/6p.m. PT to discuss Black. Fat. Femme. in the community Discord!

Meeting on the third Friday of every month at 8 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT via Discord, Fat Forward Book Club will read and discuss a variety of books by fat authors, about fat experiences, and/or featuring fat characters as determined by Fat Forward Pillars ($5 Bindery subscribers). We'll explore books across multiple genres and target audiences/age groups to discuss depictions of fatness in fiction and nonfiction, as well as how perceptions of fatness in the book world have changed or stayed the same in recent years.

All subscribers are invited to participate in monthly book club discussions! Fat Forward Pillars ($5 subscribers) have the opportunity to vote on each month's book club pick and to suggest future titles for consideration, among other additional perks. Please see the membership tab for details!

If you're not already following this Bindery Page, please click the link in the top right corner to sign up! It's free, easy, and takes just a few seconds. Every community member helps us reach our goal of creating a fat-focused publishing imprint.

Once you subscribe, don't forget to register for the Fat Forward Books Discord server for bookish discussion all day, every day, and for our monthly book club meetings!