As featured by The Daily Show, NPR, PBS, CBC, Time, VIBE, Entertainment Weekly and Well-Read Black Girl
Included in Foreword Reviews Best Books of 2019, Entrepreneur magazine's Best Books of 2019 for Entrepreneurs and The Stack Podcast's 10 Favorite Reads of 2019.
A New York Times Editor's Choice selection
Shortlisted for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award
In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom - award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed - is unapologetically thick: deemed 'thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less'.
McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work. She 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.
This bold compendium, likely to find its place on shelves alongside Lindy West, Rebecca Solnit, and Maggie Nelson, dissects everything from beauty to Obama to pumpkin spice lattes. Yet Thick will also fill a void on those very shelves: a modern black American female voice waxing poetic on self and society, serving up a healthy portion of clever prose and southern aphorisms in a style uniquely her own.
Thick cements McMillan Cottom's position as a public thinker capable of shedding new light on what the 'personal essay' can do. She turns her chosen form into a showcase for her critical dexterity, investigating everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies.
'Thick is sure to become a classic of black intellectualism.' - The New York Times Book Review
'Cottom's intersectionality is merely the work of a writer seeing the world clearly and deeply, and connecting the dots in fresh and revealing ways.'
- Chicago Tribune
'Incisive, witty, and provocative essays...the collection showcases McMillian Cottoms wisdom and originality and amply fulfils her aim of telling powerful stories that become a problem for power' - Publishes Weekly, starred review
'The meshing of the personal and political and the author's take-no-prisioners attitude makes these essays sizzle.' - 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
