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Notes from a Trap Feminist
by Sesali Bowen
From funny and fearless entertainment journalist Sesali Bowen, Bad Fat Black Girl combines rule-breaking feminist theory, witty and insightful personal memoir, and cutting cultural analysis for an unforgettable, genre-defining debut.
Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Sesali Bowen learned early on how to hustle, stay on her toes, and champion other Black women and femmes as she navigated Blackness, queerness, fatness, friendship, poverty, sex work, and self-love.
Her love of trap music led her to the top of hip-hop journalism, profiling game-changing artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Janelle Monae. But despite all the beauty, complexity, and general badassery she saw, Bowen found none of that nuance represented in mainstream feminism. Thus, she coined Trap Feminism, a contemporary framework that interrogates where feminism meets today's hip-hop.
Bad Fat Black Girl offers a new, inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together searing personal essay and cultural commentary, Bowen interrogates sexism, fatphobia, and capitalism all within the context of race and hip-hop. In the process, she continues a Black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience.
Bad bitches: this one's for you.
"This is a powerful call for a more inclusive and "real" feminism." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Bowen writes from an authentic space for Black women who are often left out of feminist conversations due to respectability politics, but who are just as deserving of the same voice and liberation." —Booklist (starred review)
"Sesali is one of my favorite voices because of her truth, that somehow seems to be my own truth... . The duality of being from the hood, and educated and valuable in ways most people find contradictory; a feminist, who doesn't need a man, but wants to be wanted because Bad Bitches need love too ... Sesali perfectly vocalizes the inner dialogue, and daily mantras needed to be a Bad Bitch." —Gabourey Sidibe, actor, director, and author of This is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare
"Reading [Bad Fat Black Girl] is like an unforgettable conversation between you and your best homegirl. Expect to cry from laughing too hard, be pushed intellectually, love yourself more deeply, and commit to charging your worth like only the badddddddeeest do!" —Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown, professor and author of Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward A Hip Hop Feminist Pedagogy and Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood
This information about Bad Fat Black Girl 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.
Sesali Bowen is a writer who curates events, writes for film and television, and creates elevated pop culture correspondence. Bowen is the former senior entertainment editor at Nylon magazine and senior entertainment writer at Refinery29. Focusing on Black pop culture, she helped launch Unbothered, R29's sub brand for Black women. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and Feministing. Bowen lives in New Jersey.
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