Thanks to #netgalley for the ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. This memoir was written in short bite size chapters. It was a poignant, confronting and thought provoking read that was everything you would ever want in a memoir. An honest portrayal of Kneen's experiences as an overweight, queer person and coming to terms with how some people in society view/judge overweight people and how they along with their partner love and appreciate every part of the body they are in. I found the Burlesque dancing to also be an empowering and confidence boosting idea of how we can all learn to embrace the bodies we and others have and to admire and appreciate them accordingly, instead of looking at them with judgement. #kriskneen #fatgirldancing #netgalley #goodreads #tea_sipping_bookworm #getlitsy #thestorygraph #memoir #fat #bookqueen #bookstagram

A moving, courageous, and open-hearted memoir of negotiating the world in a body that lies outside traditional, conventional, highly problematic standards of not just beauty, but social and cultural acceptability. From childhood, Kneen charts the myriad ways in which they have been defined and judged by their weight, and shares the heartbreaking battles that have raged internally as a result, despite having a successful writing career and an adoring partner. Brimming with tenderness and bravery, their story is both deeply personal and culturally significant, asking all of us to reconsider our relationship to fat.
Occasionally the narrative feels a little repetitive, as Kneen emphasises their difficulties, and structurally the book jars in places, with lots of time switches, back and forth and sideways. But overall, this is a poignant and generous offering that truly deserves to be read.

I enjoyed my first read by Kneen - thematically I was drawn to the exploration of fat identity, perhaps enjoying the exploration of gender more so as it felt like it arose so organically across the writing in this. “Woman” feeling like a costume,
something performed, but a name for how to otherwise identify not being as easy to articulate.

I also really enjoyed the way this felt like two parallel threads of narrative writing - it was memoir but episodic and goal-oriented, particularly in so far as Kneen explored their pursuit of diving and burlesque alongside their visual art and documenting the fat body as part of writing about it. The photography and images of paintings in this was particularly effective in teasing out these connections.

I did feel some of the more creative writing pieces interspersed in the last part of the text didn’t work as well, and perhaps didn’t feel as congruous structurally as the earlier part of this text was. Still one of the best works I’ve read exploring fat identity and gender simultaneously, so one I recommend. I also really felt the joy in the latter part of the text around the burlesque performance and thought there was a really sensual and evocative element to the writing here particularly (and so self empowering!).

3.5 ⭐️