num_pages: 208
description: A powerful and provocative collection of essays that offers poignant reflections on living between societys most charged politicized and intractably polar spacesbetween black and white rich and poor thin and fat.Savala Nolan knows what it means to live in the in-between. Descended from a Black and Mexican father and a white mother Nolans mixed-race identity is obvious for better and worse. At her mothers encouragement she began her first diet at the age of three and has been both fat and painfully thin throughout her life. She has experienced both the discomfort of generational poverty and the ease of wealth and privilege.It is these liminal spacesof race class and body typethat the essays in Dont Let It Get You Down excavate presenting a clear and nuanced understanding of our societys most intractable points of tension. The twelve essays that comprise this collection are rich with unforgettable anecdotes and are as humorous and as full of Nolans appetites as they are of anxieties. The result is lyrical and magnetic.In On Dating White Guys While Me Nolan realizes her early romantic pursuits of rich preppy white guys werent about preference but about self-erasure. In the titular essay Dont Let it Get You Down we traverse the cyclical richness and sorrow of being Black in America as Black children face police brutality large Black females encounter unique stigma and Black men carry the weight of other peoples fear. In Bad Education we see how women learn to internalize rage and accept violence in order to participate in our culture. And in To Wit and Also we meet Filliss Grace and Peggy the enslaved women owned by Nolans white ancestors reckoning with the knowledge that Americas original sin lives intimately within our present stories. Over and over again Nolan reminds us that our true identities are often most authentically lived not in the black and white but in the grey of the in-between.Perfect for fans of Heavy by Kiese Laymon and Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay Dont Let It Get You Down delivers an essential perspective on race class bodies and gender in America today.
language: English
title: Don't Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body
publisher: Simon & Schuster