num_pages: 288
description: In her highly anticipated debut novel Mecca Jamilah Sullivan explores the perilsand undeniable beautyof insatiable longing.Growing up in a rapidly changing Harlem eight-year-old Malaya hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings; shed rather paint alone in her bedroom or enjoy forbidden street foods with her father. For Malaya the pressures of her predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are relentless as are the expectations passed down from her painfully proper mother and sharp-tongued grandmother. As she comes of age in the 1990s she finds solace in the music of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah but her weight continues to climbuntil a family tragedy forces her to face the source of her hunger ultimately shattering her inherited stigmas surrounding womens bodies and embracing her own desire. Written with vibrant lyricism shot through with tenderness Big Girl announces Sullivan as an urgent and vital voice in contemporary fiction.
language: English
title: Big Girl
publisher: Liveright