Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun L. Harrison

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction, this book is the most “academic” of Triplett’s list. “What I love about this book is that Da’Shaun puts everything out for everyone to learn from: it connects ideas of anti-fatness in the U.S. and globally and anti-Blackness, and links them together in a very astute way. I learned so much from this in a way that is different from an emotional learning that I would get from another book, learning about like history and society and how these institutions and these -isms are bad for so many people. I think I’m sort of wary of picking up books that might seem more like academic because I’m imagining them to be dense or very long. But I think this is not that. I think it’s a pretty swift read. There are seven essays. I think Da’Shaun L Harrison is someone who’s going to be a figure challenging all of us to be a lot more radical for years to come.” The book, Triplett adds, is attractive for another reason: “It makes itself important by centering Black people. And it is a work of love because people have ignored these things for so long. It’s not pedantic in a way that makes people feel bad.”