YoungGiftedandFat

Sharrell D. Luckett is Assistant Professor of Theatre & Performance Studies at Muhlenberg College. Her literary and embodied research is situated in Performance Studies, African American Studies, acting/directing theory, and Fat Studies.

YoungGiftedandFat is the best account of the intersection between body size, race, and gender available to the critical reader.Sander L. Gilman, Author of Fat Boys and Fat: A Cultural History of ObesityHilarious and tragic, YoungGiftedandFat is as surprising and unexpected in its emotional candor, as it is familiar in its stories of coming-of-age fat in millennial America. Luckett reveals how "fatness" in US society disrupts notions of value and distorts experiences of childhood, adolescence, womanhood, selfhood, femininity, sex, and sexuality.Stephanie L. Batiste, Associate Professor of English and Black Studies, University of California at Santa BarbaraSharrell D. Luckett serves up a book worthy of the "thick peculiarities" its expansive title promises. Weighty in its theoretical complexity, the writing is refreshingly clear and compelling – the hallmark of a masterful storyteller.Sara Warner, Associate Professor, Department of Performing & Media Arts, Cornell UniversityYoungGiftedandFat, the book and the performance, belongs in the center of our dialogues on autoethnographic and autobiographical performance because it is not only risky, it also relentlessly challenges traditional views of race, class, gender, power, sexuality, and fat.M. Heather Carver, Professor and Chair of Theatre, University of Missouri-Columbia

• Foreword Bryant Keith AlexanderAcknowledgementsBefore PicIntroduction: Contextualizing the ConundrumChapter 1. Touched Talk 'Fat' Session: Say it ain't so…daddy issues?Chapter 2. Disappearing ActsChapter 3. Passing StrangeTalk 'Fat' Session: FracturedChapter 4. MaintenanceChapter 5. Weighted LossTalk 'Fat' Session: Staging LifeChapter 6. "YoungGiftedandFat" – (The Play)Chapter 7. Fat Girl FuturityAfter PicReferencesIndex