★ 08/02/2021
Journalist Bowen’s bold and winning debut fuses an unabashed love of hip-hop with a feminist consciousness that is “educated, but always willing to throw these hands” and a celebration of the social power of “ratchet Black girls.” Blending cultural analysis and memoir, Bowen explains why being a shoplifter able to code-switch “in a way that could both impress and disarm white folks” was an expression of power, and how her and a white male friend’s different experiences after being arrested for stealing from Nordstrom’s highlighted “disparities of class, race, and gender” in the justice system. Bowen also discusses fatphobia within hip-hop culture, defends plastic surgery (“I want no part of a fake ass body positivity that allows people to uphold unrealistic standards, shame women for not meeting them, but still demand that we love and embrace our bodies”), and celebrates the “raw realness” of Megan Thee Stallion and other “misogynoir”-busting female rap artists. Throughout, Bowen uplifts “the resilience, defiance, and attitudes of Black girls,” while pointing out the “racial microaggressions” of mainstream, majority white feminist groups such as Planned Parenthood. This is a powerful call for a more inclusive and “real” feminism. Agent: Nick Richesin, Wendy Sherman Assoc. (Oct.)
This is a powerful call for a more inclusive and “real” feminism.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Bowen writes from an authentic space for Black women who are often left out of feminist conversations due to respectability politics, but who are just as deserving of the same voice and liberation.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Sesali is one of my favorite voices because of her truth, that somehow seems to be my own truth. . . . The duality of being from the hood, and educated and valuable in ways most people find contradictory; a feminist, who doesn't need a man, but wants to be wanted because Bad Bitches need love too . . . Sesali perfectly vocalizes the inner dialogue, and daily mantras needed to be a Bad Bitch.” — Gabourey Sidibe, actor, director, and author of This is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare
“Reading [Bad Fat Black Girl ] is like an unforgettable conversation between you and your best homegirl. Expect to cry from laughing too hard, be pushed intellectually, love yourself more deeply, and commit to charging your worth like only the badddddddeeest do!” — Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown, professor and author of Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward A Hip Hop Feminist Pedagogy and Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood
“Sesali Bowen is poised to give Black feminism the rejuvenation it needs. Her trend-setting writing and commentary reaches across experiences and beyond respectability. I and so many Black girls still figuring out who they are in this world will gain so much from whatever she has to say.” — Charlene A. Carruthers, activist and author of Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
“Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist matter-of-factly resurfaces the contributions of Black femmes often left out of even prominent Black feminist texts. As Sesali put it perfectly, Black fat girls from the hood wearing bonnets in public preserving their hairstyles to not be seen as unkempt deserve a framework to be returned to them, as they are the progenitors of why a Black feminist framework would need to even exists. This is a text that belongs in the feminist, music, sex, race, and class sections of the bookstore. It does not merely focus on one topic, but effortlessly captures the intersections of Black experience free from respectability, a celebration of the folks who are often sex shamed, sex workers, and those who are denied pleasure entirely.” — Ericka Hart, Activist and Sexuality Educator
“Sesali Bowen is the girl a lot of media types have been cosplaying as for years. In her first book she has proven why she can be imitated, but never duplicated. Her willingness to be at once incredibly vulnerable and unrepentantly entitled on behalf of Black women—including herself—is a gift.” — Jamilah Lemieux, Writer, Culture Critic, Podcast Host
Reading [Bad Fat Black Girl ] is like an unforgettable conversation between you and your best homegirl. Expect to cry from laughing too hard, be pushed intellectually, love yourself more deeply, and commit to charging your worth like only the badddddddeeest do!
Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist matter-of-factly resurfaces the contributions of Black femmes often left out of even prominent Black feminist texts. As Sesali put it perfectly, Black fat girls from the hood wearing bonnets in public preserving their hairstyles to not be seen as unkempt deserve a framework to be returned to them, as they are the progenitors of why a Black feminist framework would need to even exists. This is a text that belongs in the feminist, music, sex, race, and class sections of the bookstore. It does not merely focus on one topic, but effortlessly captures the intersections of Black experience free from respectability, a celebration of the folks who are often sex shamed, sex workers, and those who are denied pleasure entirely.
Sesali Bowen is the girl a lot of media types have been cosplaying as for years. In her first book she has proven why she can be imitated, but never duplicated. Her willingness to be at once incredibly vulnerable and unrepentantly entitled on behalf of Black women—including herself—is a gift.
Sesali is one of my favorite voices because of her truth, that somehow seems to be my own truth. . . . The duality of being from the hood, and educated and valuable in ways most people find contradictory; a feminist, who doesn't need a man, but wants to be wanted because Bad Bitches need love too . . . Sesali perfectly vocalizes the inner dialogue, and daily mantras needed to be a Bad Bitch.
Bowen writes from an authentic space for Black women who are often left out of feminist conversations due to respectability politics, but who are just as deserving of the same voice and liberation.
Booklist (starred review)
Sesali Bowen is poised to give Black feminism the rejuvenation it needs. Her trend-setting writing and commentary reaches across experiences and beyond respectability. I and so many Black girls still figuring out who they are in this world will gain so much from whatever she has to say.
★ 11/01/2021
Part memoir, part cultural analysis, this first book by journalist Bowen (who coined the term trap feminism) is an introspective work on making feminism more inclusive, and a searing indictment of mainstream versions of feminism that leave so many people behind. Bowen begins with an overview of the intersection of feminism and trap music, then offers meditations on blackness, queerness, and fatness; for Bowen, they all overlap in the forms of racism, sexism, and fatphobia. The entire work is remarkable, but especially its engagement with discourse about body positivity and beauty and fashion standards that are upheld by mainstream society. Bowen is perhaps at her best when exploring the nuances of what it means to call a Black girl confident and analyzing how the label is applied to Black women artists like Lizzo and Megan Thee Stallion. Similarly, she deconstructs the hypersexualization of Black women in popular culture and mainstream media, and unpacks why Black women (particularly those who are sex workers) are often devalued. VERDICT Expertly interviewing personal anecdotes with pop culture, Bowen has written a necessary work that centers Black women in the modern history of feminism. Pass along to fans of Hood Feminism , by Mikki Kendall.—Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal
2021-08-17
“I’m fat,” writes Bowen in the first chapter. “Let’s start there.” This frankness sets the tone for the book. Framing the text around trap music, “a hip-hop subgenre that expresses some of the realities and aspirational views of Black folks from the hood,” the author uses specific experiences as points of reference to explain her life’s guiding empowerment principle—what she terms “trap feminism.” Before she named it, Bowen clarifies, this creed “was written into the codes I learned growing up broke, curious, Black, resilient, and female in some of the worst parts of Chicago. It’s what I learned through fistfights, sex work, queerness, and fatness….It’s still how I navigate and make sense of the world.” Throughout, the author, the former entertainment editor for Nylon magazine, compellingly addresses themes of racism, sexism, body politics, anarchy, an unreliable justice system, confidence, money, and sexuality, among many others. In differentiating sex work and sex trafficking, Bowen shares her account of a man trying to pimp her out when she was 14, and she makes a case for decriminalizing sex work. “My love for trap makes me what Roxane Gay would call a ‘bad feminist,’ ” Bowen writes, acknowledging that the music is frequently deemed misogynistic. Still, over decades of listening to female rappers, the author notes, “I learned to prioritize my own desires, ambitions, and pleasures, because for all the ways that they might reflect how men talk about us in their rhymes, these women are also adding a key piece of nuance…women, especially Black women, are inherently valuable.” Of trap feminists, she concludes, “We do what we have to when we can’t do what we want to.” Bowen’s writing will appeal to readers undeterred by profanity who are interested in both contemporary hip-hop and feminist autobiographies.
Direct, driven, occasionally dirty, and undeniably fresh.
