{"title":"Mecca Jamilah Sullivan","description":"\u003cp\u003eDive into the vibrant and lyrical world of Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, where queer Black girlhood blossoms with resilience and joy. Explore stories that sing with heart, humour, and unflinching honesty.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"big-girl-book-mecca-jamilah-sullivan-9780349017846","title":"Big Girl","description":"A BBC RADIO 2 BOOKCLUB PICK SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTRE FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE, THE GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE AND THE LAMBDA AWARD  *'Absolutely incredible. Beautiful, powerful writing. These pages will stay with me forever' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS, author of QUEENIE *'A gift as big, beautiful and complicated as living itself' Jacqueline Woodson, author of RED AT THE BONE *'Hilariously funny and quietly devastating' Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of PATSY and HERE COMES THE SUN *'There are three books on earth that I would give anything to be able to write and reread until the suns burns us up. Big Girl is one of those books' Kiese Laymon, author of HEAVY    A THING IS MIGHTY BIG WHEN TIME AND DISTANCE CANNOT SHRINK IT  It was a quote by Zora Neale Hurston. Malaya liked the words. The message was a mouthful of meaning, and it changed each time she read it. At first it had seemed ominous, but now she looked at it differently. She wondered for the first time if there could be something good about bigness, something mighty about not shrinking, after all.   Growing up in rapidly gentrifying 90s Harlem, Malaya struggles to fit into a world that makes no room for her. She's funny, creative and smart, but all people see - even those who love her - is her size. At eight, she is forced to go to Weight Watchers; at twelve, her parents fear she'll be taken from them; by sixteen, a gastric bypass is discussed.   On good days, Malaya braids bright colours into her hair, turns up Biggie Smalls on her Walkman, and strides through Harlem, his words galvanising her; on bad days, she doesn't leave her bed other than for furtive trips for the forbidden food that will comfort her - for a while.   Big Girl is an unforgettable portrait of a queer Black girl as she learns to take up space in the world on her own terms.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49557929853201,"sku":"GOR013148441","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49746628903185,"sku":"NGR9780349017846","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50556148121873,"sku":"GOR013351235","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52725535670545,"sku":"GOR014599898","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0349017840.jpg?v=1750878027"},{"product_id":"big-girl-book-mecca-jamilah-sullivan-9781324091417","title":"Big Girl","description":"“Alive with delicious prose and the cacophony of ’90s Harlem, Big Girl gifts us a heroine carrying the weight of worn-out ideas, who dares to defy the compulsion to shrink, and in turn teaches us to pursue our fullest, most desirous selves without shame.” —Janet Mock    Malaya Clondon hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings in the church’s stuffy basement community center. A quietly inquisitive eight-year-old struggling to suppress her insatiable longing, she would much rather paint alone in her bedroom, or sneak out with her father for a sampling of Harlem’s forbidden street foods.    For Malaya, the pressures of going to a predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are compounded by the high expectations passed down over generations from her sharp-tongued grandmother and her mother, Nyela, a painfully proper professor struggling to earn tenure at a prestigious university. But their relentless prescriptions—fad diets of cottage-cheese and sugar-free Jell-O, high-cardio African dance classes, endless doctors’ appointments—don’t work on Malaya.    As Malaya comes of age in a rapidly gentrifying 1990s Harlem, she strains to understand “ladyness” and fit neatly within the suffocating confines of a so-called “femininity” that holds no room for her body. She finds solace in the lyrical riffs of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, and in the support of her sensitive father, Percy; still, tensions at home mount as rapidly as Malaya’s weight. Nothing seems to help—until a family tragedy forces her to finally face the source of her hunger on her own terms.    Exquisitely compassionate and clever, Big Girl is “filled with everyday people who, in Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s gifted hands, show us the love and struggle of what it means to be inside bodies that don’t always fit with the outside world” (Jacqueline Woodson). In tracing the perils and pleasures of the inheritance that comes with being born, Sullivan pushes boundaries and creates an unforgettable portrait of Black womanhood in America.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49665275199761,"sku":"GOR013699604","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49759080972561,"sku":"CIN132409141XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50784376324369,"sku":"CIN132409141XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":50913838956817,"sku":"CIN132409141XLN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51023102771473,"sku":"NIN9781324091417","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51331811410193,"sku":"CIN132409141XA","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/132409141X.jpg?v=1750793027"},{"product_id":"poetics-of-difference-book-mecca-jamilah-sullivan-9780252086038","title":"The Poetics of Difference","description":"Winner of the Modern Language Association (MLA)’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize  From Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, and Bessie Head, to Zanele Muholi, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Missy Elliott, Black women writers and artists across the African Diaspora have developed nuanced and complex creative forms. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan ventures into the unexplored spaces of black women’s queer creative theorizing to learn its languages and read the textures of its forms. Moving beyond fixed notions, Sullivan points to a space of queer imagination where black women invent new languages, spaces, and genres to speak the many names of difference. Black women’s literary cultures have long theorized the complexities surrounding nation and class, the indeterminacy of gender and race, and the multiple meanings of sexuality. Yet their ideas and work remain obscure in the face of indifference from Western scholarship.    Innovative and timely, The Poetics of Difference illuminates understudied queer contours of black women’s writing.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49738928881937,"sku":"NGR9780252086038","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0252086031.jpg?v=1767351418"},{"product_id":"big-girl-book-mecca-jamilah-sullivan-9780349017860","title":"Big Girl","description":"A BBC RADIO 2 BOOKCLUB PICK SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTRE FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE, THE GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE AND THE LAMBDA AWARD  *'Absolutely incredible. Beautiful, powerful writing. These pages will stay with me forever' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS, author of QUEENIE *'A gift as big, beautiful and complicated as living itself' Jacqueline Woodson, author of RED AT THE BONE *'Hilariously funny and quietly devastating' Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of PATSY and HERE COMES THE SUN *'There are three books on earth that I would give anything to be able to write and reread until the suns burns us up. Big Girl is one of those books' Kiese Laymon, author of HEAVY  Growing up in rapidly gentrifying 90s Harlem, Malaya struggles to fit into a world that makes no room for her. She's funny, creative and smart, but all people see - even those who love her - is her size. At eight, she is forced to go to Weight Watchers; at twelve, her parents fear she'll be taken from them; by sixteen, a gastric bypass is discussed.  But tensions at home are mounting as rapidly as Malaya's weight, and soon a family tragedy forces her to finally face the source of her hunger on her own terms...  An extraordinary debut novel shot through with remarkable nuance and tenderness, Big Girl is the unforgettable portrait of a queer Black girl as she learns to take up space in the world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49778640158993,"sku":"NGR9780349017860","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50689625063697,"sku":"GOR014036905","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51681352057105,"sku":"GOR014348596","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52400617849105,"sku":"NLS9780349017860","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0349017867.jpg?v=1751439703"},{"product_id":"big-girl-book-mecca-jamilah-sullivan-9781324093596","title":"Big Girl","description":"“Alive with delicious prose and the cacophony of ’90s Harlem, Big Girl gifts us a heroine carrying the weight of worn-out ideas, who dares to defy the compulsion to shrink, and in turn teaches us to pursue our fullest, most desirous selves without shame.” —Janet Mock    Malaya Clondon hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings in the church’s stuffy basement community center. A quietly inquisitive eight-year-old struggling to suppress her insatiable longing, she would much rather paint alone in her bedroom, or sneak out with her father for a sampling of Harlem’s forbidden street foods.    For Malaya, the pressures of going to a predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are compounded by the high expectations passed down over generations from her sharp-tongued grandmother and her mother, Nyela, a painfully proper professor struggling to earn tenure at a prestigious university. But their relentless prescriptions—fad diets of cottage-cheese and sugar-free Jell-O, high-cardio African dance classes, endless doctors’ appointments—don’t work on Malaya.    As Malaya comes of age in a rapidly gentrifying 1990s Harlem, she strains to understand “ladyness” and fit neatly within the suffocating confines of a so-called “femininity” that holds no room for her body. She finds solace in the lyrical riffs of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, and in the support of her sensitive father, Percy; still, tensions at home mount as rapidly as Malaya’s weight. Nothing seems to help—until a family tragedy forces her to finally face the source of her hunger on her own terms.    Exquisitely compassionate and clever, Big Girl is “filled with everyday people who, in Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s gifted hands, show us the love and struggle of what it means to be inside bodies that don’t always fit with the outside world” (Jacqueline Woodson). In tracing the perils and pleasures of the inheritance that comes with being born, Sullivan pushes boundaries and creates an unforgettable portrait of Black womanhood in America.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49918137860369,"sku":"CIN1324093595VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50486839476497,"sku":"CIN1324093595G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51023280374033,"sku":"NIN9781324093596","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1324093595.jpg?v=1750856648"},{"product_id":"blue-talk-and-love-book-mecca-jamilah-sullivan-9781626011625","title":"Blue Talk and Love","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The award-wining collection Blue Talk and Love tells the stories of girls and women of color navigating the moods and mazes of urban daily life. Set in various enclaves of New York City -- including the middle-class Hamilton Heights section of Harlem, the black queer social world of the West Village, the Spanish-speaking borderland between Harlem and Washington Heights, and historic Tin Pan Alley -- the collection uses magic realism, historical fiction, satire and more to highlight young black women's inner lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe storylines range widely: a big-bodied teenage girl from Harlem discovers her sexuality in the midst of racial tensions at her Upper East Side school; four young women from Newark, New Jersey, are charged with assaulting the man who threatens to rape them; a pair of conjoined black female twins born into slavery, make their fame as stage performers in the Big City. In each story, the characters push past what is expected of them, learning to celebrate their voices and their lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn honor of Mecca Sullivan's being named the recipient of the 2018 Judith A. Markowitz Lambda Award as an emerging LGBTQ writer, Riverdale Avenue Books has released a second edition of her acclaimed collection for which the Lambda judges called Sullivan, An essential writer of our present moment.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe are so proud of Mecca for receiving this prestigious award. She made her fiction debut with Riverdale Avenue Books five years ago, when we were both new to the literary scene, and we are publishing an updated second edition with the wonderful quote from Ntozake Shange on the cover to commemorate this achievement, said Publisher Lori Perkins.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e*****\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Blue Talk and Love. the lives of wounded and glorious young gay women of color are portrayed with the delicacy of a mother tending to her terrible wounds.Sullivan enriches our lives with .characters, who are so rich and impoverished at once. --Ntozake Shange, author of for colored girls who have considered suicide\/when the rainbow is enuf\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e An essential writer of our present moment --Judges for the 2018 Judith A. Markowitz Lambda Emerging LGBTQ Writer Award\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Blue Talk and Love's voice, despite material that seems frankly contemporary, is paradoxically lyrical, nearly Faulknerian. --Rick Moody, judge for the American Short Fiction Short Story Contest\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50397049815313,"sku":"CIN1626011621G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52487588413713,"sku":"GOR014534940","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53067212161297,"sku":"CIN1626011621VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53521741185297,"sku":"NLS9781626011625","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1626011621.jpg?v=1750927284"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-mecca-jamilah-sullivan.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}