One of the benefits of writing in this space is that I can give you a little behind-the-scenes news from time to time about what’s happening with my next book, Unshrinking, which will be out in January. (Totally fine if this post is not for you! I get it.) It’s a nerve-wracking time for an author, but also an exciting one, as we finalize things like covers, copy, and blurbs, as well as beginning to plan a little book tour. And if you’re new to my substack (Hi!), or missed my posting about it originally, here’s a little something I wrote to introduce the book a few months ago. The short version: it’s about the way fatness is not a moral, or intellectual, or aesthetic, or any other kind of failing. It’s fatphobia that makes us think so, as well as comprising numerous structural barriers to fat people’s well-being—and health, ironically. Because the line we’ve been fed about the gross unhealthiness of fatness and the necessity and efficacy of dieting? It’s cultural gaslighting. And it urgently needs to end for the sake of social justice.
UK Cover
Although I signed my UK contract with Allen Lane (an imprint of Penguin Random House) shortly after I signed the US one with Crown (also an imprint of Penguin Random House), the timelines are a little different, and so it’s only more recently that I laid eyes on the UK cover. I love it! Huge thanks to my team and the designer for coming up with something that captures the book so perfectly.
The UK subtitle is now also slightly different from the US subtitle: How to Fight Fatphobia, rather than How to Face Fatphobia. Devised for different markets, I really like both, and they capture different facets of the book’s mission. Other than the subtitle, the UK book is exactly the same as the US book in content: so no need to worry about which version you’re getting. The same goes for Australian and New Zealand readers.
The Audiobook
When I first began writing on misogyny, back in 2014, I had to work through the most serious case of writers’ block I’ve dealt with before or since. I felt, in beginning to write about some of the ways that women are punished and silenced, that I would be punished and silenced myself (which has usually, but not always, been entirely inaccurate). I found myself reading my words aloud over and over again, to see if I could really stand behind them. And it quickly became an ingrained part of my writing practice: speaking my words out loud, and seeing how they felt in my mouth: authentic or hollow, measured or ill-considered, bracing or too cynical.
I don’t read everything I write out loud anymore, but I still do it regularly, and recommend doing it at least from time to time to my students. That’s partly why I wanted to read the audiobook of Unshrinking myself: I’ve said these words out loud enough that it seems odd to hand over the job of reading them for your ears to another—admittedly better-qualified—person, in the form of a voice actor. The fact that this book is part memoir, as well as part polemic and part (all?) philosophy, was another contributing factor. I wanted to tell this story in my own voice, such as it is—weird hybrid Australian-American accent and all.
Wish me luck beginning the long process of recording the audiobook this week. I hope I’ll still be able to speak by the end of it!
Blurbs
By far my—and, probably, everyone’s—least favorite post-writing, pre-publication task is soliciting blurbs. It makes most of us feel like the unpopular kid in school trying haplessly to get people to come to our birthday party. It’s daunting and confronting, in other words—even when, by most measures, our party goes fine and is reasonably well-attended.
For those of you who don’t know, blurbs are little paragraphs offered by people whose name readers might be expected to recognize—other authors, typically. They are supposed to say something about what’s in the book, and to say something nice about it. And it’s usually up to the author nowadays in the trade publishing world to ask for them. Awkward!
There are deeper critiques of blurbing to be made, and the way the system systematically favors authors with racial, gender, institutional, cultural, and other forms of privilege. It favors those who are well-connected, and those who are interpersonally as well as professionally popular. But it’s not clear that we can or will do away with blurbs anytime soon in this industry. In part, booksellers simply don’t have enough time to read all of the books that come their way, and that proliferation of books is something to be celebrated. But in view of it, they need some indication of how to display, shelve, and market a book, as well as some sense of who may want to read it.
So, blurbing is what it is, and having solicited my blurbs now, I’m going to try hard to pay it forward. In the meantime, I’m exceptionally grateful that some truly awesome authors came through and have offered my book their support. Although I hesitated to post about it here—I dragged my feet on this part of the post, in the interests of not bragging—it finally occurred to me that there’s something more than slightly ironic about writing a book called Unshrinking and then being reticent about taking up space to celebrate. So here are some nice things said by some writers I deeply admire, many of whose work I draw on in the book, and which I hope will help persuade you to pre-order it. (Pre-orders, for those of you who don’t know, are truly vital to the life of a book, since they help communicate to publications and booksellers that it is of interest to readers, which in turn makes for book reviews and sheer availability. This newsletter will always be free, as long as I’m salaried. But, if you’d like to support my work, please consider pre-ordering a copy, if you haven’t already. And, if you have or do, thank you, thank you, thank you!)
From Roxane Gay, the author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body:
“Kate Manne’s UNSHRINKING is an incisive polemic that brilliantly dissects fatphobia, the way it encroaches upon our lives, and how, ultimately, we can, if we are willing, do the challenging work of unlearning damaging ideas about fatness, health, and happiness. Manne is a beautiful writer with a consummate research ethic. The depth of her knowledge and how she synthesizes it is clear from the first page to the last and she deftly navigates personal narrative and cultural examination to demonstrate that the personal truly is political, particularly when you live in a fat body. What elevates UNSHRINKING is the keen awareness that there is no universal experience of fatness and that fatphobia, like everything else, is affected by the intersections of the identities we inhabit. UNSHRINKING is required reading for everyone who lives in an unruly human body. In UNSHRINKING, Manne has crafted an elegant, fierce, and profound argument for fighting fat oppression in ourselves, our communities, our culture.”
From Jessica DeFino, the author of The Unpublishable newsletter:
“As someone raised in the era of “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” I am beyond grateful to Kate Manne for ushering in the era of UNSHRINKING. This book is a tasty, tasty takedown of diet culture and a firm-but-gentle guide to finally getting free from fatphobia—individually, collectively, and within society at large. Is it too much to say that Manne has written a big, fat masterpiece?”
From Emily Nagoski, the co-author of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle:
“Trust Kate Manne to provide the clearest statement of the problems of the twenty-first century. She shows us, through science, reason, and human experience, the moral failure of fatphobia, in direct contradiction of the widespread and toxic narrative of fatness as a moral failing.”
From Anne Helen Petersen, the author of the Culture Study newsletter:
“UNSHRINKING is a tour de force that only someone with Kate Manne’s particular mix of rigor, clarity, and writerly skill could pull off—a must-read, no matter your body size, and an unignorable call to action. It’s devastating, it’s infuriating, it’s so fucking good.”
From Evette Dionne, the author of Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul:
“To be fat in a thin-obsessed world is to be treated as a moral failure all the time. Through impeccable research, compelling writing, and refreshing honesty, UNSHRINKING undoes so much of that undeserved shame. Kate Manne brings her razor-sharp analysis to the world we all inhabit, reminding us all that fatness isn’t a deviance and should never have been treated as one to begin with. A rich text for the ages, one we should all read, especially if we desire to create a world that treats fat people with more dignity and less disdain than this one.”
From Virginia Sole-Smith, the author of Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture:
“In UNSHRINKING, Kate Manne has given us an impeccably researched history of how anti-fat bias developed and develops within us all, as well as a thorough and incisive dissection of our modern moral panic about fat—all woven throughout with her powerful story of reclaiming her own body. If you have ever struggled to feel safe in your body as it is; if you have ever wondered who your body is for, Manne has articulated the answers: Our bodies belong to us. We are all better for her work.”
From Kimberlé Crenshaw, the author of On Intersectionality: Essential Writings:
“Kate Manne lays bare the sinister power of fatphobia—its pervasiveness, its roots in anti-Blackness, its shoddy logic—and argues beautifully and clearly for the moral necessity to resist it. Both trenchant and moving, UNSHRINKING is a long overdue reckoning and a manifesto for true intersectionality.”
From Da’Shaun L. Harrison, the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness:
“UNSHRINKING is a deft auto-ethnographic work that brilliantly weaves together indisputable research with parts of Kate Manne’s own personal story. I am thrilled and thoroughly impressed with the scholarship and pivotal citational practice displayed in this book.”
And, finally, from Carmen Maria Machado, the author of Her Body and other Parties: Stories:
“An essential book of impossible-to-overstate importance; UNSHRINKING is a lucid, vital addition to the fat canon.”
A First Review!
Finally, I’m happy to say that Unshrinking was very generously reviewed by Kirkus, an early reviewer of trade books. Here’s an excerpt:
“Incisive . . . A brave, thought-provoking book. With rigorous research and personal experience, Manne tackles and dismantles fatphobia in all its forms.”
So, I’m remaining trepidatious but feeling pretty good in the run-up to publication. Thank you so much for subscribing to this newsletter, and I hope you’ll consider reading Unshrinking too. Of the three books I’ve written now, it may be the one that goes furthest out on a limb, both personally and politically. And (But? So?) I think it is my favorite.
Readers, do you have any questions about Unshrinking, or the writing or publication process, that I can answer?
I’m so very excited to read and then teach this book. Because of your work I now teach a senior seminar on moral narratives in media. I change the theme from time to time-- did a few semesters with misogyny and Down Girl, and now a few semesters on family abolition, but for absolute sure Unshrinking will be the anchor for a semester on fatness. ❤️
I pre-ordered the book as soon as it was announced, and am eager to get my grubby mitts on m copy! I hope you saw Tressie McMillan Cottom's praise of your book in her column in the NYT today.