Critics' Opinion:
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Published Jan 2019
224 pages
Genre: Essays
Publication Information
Smart, humorous, and strikingly original essays by one of "America's most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time" (Rebecca Traister)
In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom - award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed - embraces her venerated role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society.
Ideas and identity fuse effortlessly in this vibrant collection that on bookshelves is just as at home alongside Rebecca Solnit and bell hooks as it is beside Jeff Chang and Janet Mock. It also fills an important void on those very shelves: a modern black American feminist voice waxing poetic on self and society, serving up a healthy portion of clever prose and southern aphorisms as she covers everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies. Thick speaks fearlessly to a range of topics and is far more genre-bending than a typical compendium of personal essays.
An intrepid intellectual force hailed by the likes of Trevor Noah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Oprah, Tressie McMillan Cottom is "among America's most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time" (Rebecca Traister). This stunning debut collection - in all its intersectional glory - mines for meaning in places many of us miss, and reveals precisely how the political, the social, and the personal are almost always one and the same.
"Starred Review. Incisive, witty, and provocative essays ... The collection showcases McMillan Cottom's wisdom and originality and amply fulfills her aim of telling powerful stories that become a problem for power." - Publishers Weekly
"The meshing of the personal and political and the author's take-no-prisoners attitude make these essays sizzle. A provocative volume bound to stir argument and discussion." - Kirkus Reviews
"To say this collection is transgressive, provocative, and brilliant is simply to tell you the truth. Thick is a necessary work and a reminder that Tressie McMillan Cottom is one of the finest public intellectuals writing today." - Roxane Gay, author of Hunger and Bad Feminist
"Thick is gorgeous, incisive, and hard. Tressie McMillan Cottom is among America's most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time and she is at her very best here. These essays enlighten and complicate and push conversations further. They are blisteringly smart and beautifully written. They are also, simply, a pleasure to read." - Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad and All the Single Ladies
"Thick proves why readers should trust Tressie McMillan Cottom's black-people-loving writing that is as deft as it is amusing. Her words are a sword. She comes out swinging her blade at the hydra's head with unmatched courage." - Darnell L. Moore, author of No Ashes in the Fire
"These essays show us the potency of actually existing black feminist analysis and expose the deep structures of racism and inequality that shape most black women's lives. With biting humor and razor-sharp political clarity, Thick is a crucial contribution to contemporary black thought." - Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
"Reading Thick is like holding a mirror to your soul and to that of America. [S]earingly intimate and astute ... at once painfully honest and gloriously affirming." - Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body
"Rich with layers of meaning ... blaaaaaack and southern and country and wise [and] pulsates with wit, self-awareness, and unabashed expertise. For Professional Smart People with sense, her writing is #goals." - Soraya McDonald, culture critic at The Undefeated
"Thick is aptly named, for McMillan Cottom is no intellectual lightweight - she walks heavy, bringing together her singular sociological insights with compelling and relatable storytelling." - Brittney Cooper, author of Eloquent Rage
This information about Thick was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tressie McMillan Cottom is an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work has been featured by the Washington Post, NPR's Fresh Air, The Daily Show, the New York Times, Slate, and The Atlantic, among others. She lives in Richmond, Virginia
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