Meet the Author - Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph. D.

A native of Harlem, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is the author of Blue Talk and Love, winner of the Judith A. Markowitz Award from Lambda Literary. She is an associate professor of English at Georgetown University and lives in Washington, DC.

About the Book-

An extraordinary debut novel shot through with remarkable nuance and tenderness, Big Girl traces the intergenerational hungers of the profoundly lovable Malaya Clondon. In this highly anticipated novel, Mecca explores the perils and undeniable beauty of insatiable longing.

Growing up in a rapidly changing Harlem, eight year old Malaya hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings; she'd rather paint alone in her bedroom or enjoy forbidden street foods with her father. For Malaya, the pressures of her predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are relentless, as are the expectations passed down from her painfully proper mother and sharp-tongued grandmother.

As she comes of age in the 1990's, she finds solace in the music of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, but her weight continues to climb; until a family tragedy forces her to face the source of her hunger, ultimately shattering her inherited stigmas surrounding women's bodies, and embracing her own desire.

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