Fat Girl Dancing

Description

How does a person come to know that they are different from the children around them? To measure themselves against a set normal and find themselves lacking? When did I know that I was plump, and then fat? Fat child, self-denying adolescent, hungry young woman; a body now burgeoning uncontrolled into middle age. Kris Kneen has borne the usual indignities: the confrontations with clothes that won't fasten, with mirrors that defame, with strangers whose gaze judges and dismisses. This is the story of how Kris learned to look unblinkingly at their recalcitrant body, and ultimately found the courage to carry it to freedom. Fat Girl Dancing is a frank, beautiful and triumphant ode to self-respect from one of Australia's most original and acclaimed writers.

Kris Kneen is the award-winning author of memoir-Affection and The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen-and fiction: An Uncertain Grace, Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, Wintering, as well as the Thomas Shapcott Award-winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. They have written and directed broadcast documentaries for SBS and ABC Television.

'Muscular, dexterous, and superbly inventive, Fat Girl Dancing is an extraordinary investigation - and expression - of the self.' * Sarah Krasnostein * 'Insightful and poetic, Fat Girl Dancing is a triumph. I am better for having read it, perhaps even a little more human. This book may be Kneen's specific story, but it is for every mind and every body.' * Bri Lee * 'A prism of a book, relighting the world around us, page by page.' * Chloe Hooper * 'With characteristic Kneen heart and originality we are invited into a lifetime hunger for disappearance, a pursuit of love, and moments of perfection. Iconically queer and questioning, with a bobbing cork of generosity. A pleasure to hold.' * Kaya Wilson * 'A story of love that questions perceptions and presumptions with gentle heart, unflinching introspection and lyrical ferocity. Exquisitely shaped and personally provocative.' * Ashley Hay * 'A raw yet lyrical memoir that digs into the hidden parts of ourselves with a tender and unflinching gaze. On each page, Kneen breathes poetry into the pain of having the "wrong" body.' * Yves Rees * 'Visceral and transportive, Fat Girl Dancing is a triumph of story telling, at once sharp and compassionate, critical yet subjective. In this wildly creative memoir, the body is explored in all its richness, controversy and taboo. This is Kneen at their finest.' * Mirandi Riwoe * 'Equally sumptuous as it is heartbreaking, Fat Girl Dancing evokes the sweaty, dreamy, beautiful nightmare of living in a body that the culture at large rejects. Kneen puts it all out there: flesh, insecurity and art, and in doing so creating a work of corporeal neutrality and--most importantly--uncompromising sexiness' * Eloise Grills * 'Brave, visceral and original. An unsettling look at bodies in all their frailty...' * Kristina Olsson * 'This reckoning of the body is an incredible act of generosity and nerve that will entirely reframe how you understand flesh and fat. A remarkable work by a writer at the height of their powers'. * Benjamin Law *