The first of its kind, A Hunger So Wide and So Deep challenges the popular notion that eating problems occur only among white, well-to-do, heterosexual women. Becky W. Thompson shows us how race, class, sexuality, and nationality can shape women's eating problems. Based on in-depth life history interviews with African-American, Latina, and lesbian women, her book chronicles the effects of racism, poverty, sexism, acculturation, and sexual abuse on women's bodies and eating patterns. A Hunger So Wide and So Deep dispels popular stereotypes of anorexia and bulimia as symptoms of vanity and underscores the risks of mislabeling what is often a way of coping with society's own disorders. By featuring the creative ways in which women have changed their unwanted eating patterns and regained trust in their bodies and appetites, Thompson offers a message of hope and empowerment that applies across race, class, and sexual preference.

The first in-depth look at white people’s activism in fighting racism during the past fifty years. Not since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, when many white college students went south to fight against Jim Crow laws, has white antiracist activity held the public’s attention. Yet there have always been white people involved in fighting racism. In this passionate work, Becky Thompson looks at white Americans who have struggled against racism, offering examples of both successes and failures, inspirations, practical philosophies, and a way ahead. A Promise and a Way of Life weaves an account of the past half-century based on the life histories of thirty-nine people who have placed antiracist activism at the center of their lives. Through a rich and fascinating narrative that links individual experiences with social and political history, Thompson shows the ways, both public and personal, in which whites have opposed racism during several social movements: the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, multiracial feminism, the Central American peace movement, the struggle for antiracist education, and activism against the prison industry. Beginning with the diverse catalysts that started these activists on their journeys, this book demonstrates the contributions and limitations of white antiracism in key social justice movements. Through these stories, crucial questions are raised: Does antiracist work require a repudiation of one’s whiteness or can that identity be transformed through political commitment and alliances? What do white people need to do to undermine white privilege? What would it take to build a multiracial movement in which white people are responsible for creating antiracist alliances while not co-opting people of color? Unique in its depth and thoroughness, A Promise and a Way of Life is essential for anyone currently fighting racism or wondering how to do so. Through its demonstration of the extraordinary personal and social transformations ordinary people can make, it provides a new paradigm for movement activity, one that will help to incite and guide future antiracist activism.

In this lively and provocative book, two feminist public sociologists turn to classical social thinkers—W. E. B. Du Bois, Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Émile Durkheim—to understand a series of twenty-first century social traumas, including the massacre at Columbine High School, the 9/11 attacks, the torture at Abu Ghraib prison, and Hurricane Katrina. Each event was overwhelming in its own right, while the relentless pace at which they occurred made it nearly impossible to absorb and interpret them in any but the most superficial ways. Yet, each uncovered social problems that cry out for our understanding and remediation. In When the Center Is on Fire, Becky Thompson and Diane Harriford assert that classical social theorists grappled with the human condition in ways that remain profoundly relevant. They show, for example, that the loss of "double consciousness" that Du Bois identified in African Americans enabled political elites to turn a blind eye to the poverty and vulnerability of many of New Orleans's citizens. The authors' compelling, sometimes irreverent, often searing interpretations make this book essential reading for students, activists, generations X, Y, and Z, and everybody bored by the 6 o'clock news.

*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times* *Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, BuzzFeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Critics* In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir—winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize—genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon “provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot” (Entertainment Weekly). In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting…generous” (The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free. “A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. “You won’t be able to put [this memoir] down…It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities” (The Atlantic).

"Susan Burton is ready to come clean. Happily married with two children, working at her dream job, she has lived a secret life of compulsive eating and starving for twenty-five years. This is a relentlessly honest ... narrative of living with binge-eating disorder"--

An inspiring collection of essays that reveal the healing power of yoga, Survivors on the Yoga Mat is an ideal companion for trauma survivors and yoga teachers alike. Weaving together stories from her classes, travels, and workshops, author Becky Thompson shows the brave and unique ways that survivors approach yoga: the creative ways that they practice, the challenges they face, and the transformative experiences they discover. Thompson skillfully draws connections between yoga and social-justice activism, demonstrating how a trauma-sensitive approach to yoga makes room for all of us—across race, class, gender, religion and nationality. Survivors on the Yoga Mat offers stories, reflections, and meditations for people who are healing from a wide range of traumas—sexual abuse, accidents, child abuse, war, illnesses, incarceration, and other injuries. The book consists of 90 true stories—alternately funny, surprising, and irreverent—that together provide a roadmap for survivors on their journey to wholeness. Organized into six sections, the book explores the challenges of beginning a yoga practice; the unique strengths of trauma survivors; the circuitous path of healing; yoga's value as a lifelong practice; the special role of teachers; and the potential of yoga as an avenue for activism. Also included is a description of Pantajali's Eight Limbs of Yoga, a list of resources, an appendix explaining the different styles of yoga, and a beautiful photo glossary with over 100 photos of the yoga postures mentioned in the book.

From the guitarist of the pioneering band Sleater-Kinney, the book Kim Gordon says "everyone has been waiting for" and a New York Times Notable Book of 2015-- a candid, funny, and deeply personal look at making a life--and finding yourself--in music. Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as “America’s best rock band” by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock. HUNGER MAKES ME A MODERN GIRL is an intimate and revealing narrative of her escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era’s flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later. With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one’s true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.

A poetry anthology that illuminates exile and displacement. Making Mirrors began on two continents, envisioned by Palestinian poet and aid worker, Jehan Bseiso, and Becky Thompson, a US-based poet changed by months of greeting refugees after their perilous journey across the Aegean Sea. This anthology uses mirrors to reflect imagistic connections that allow us to see ourselves in each other, those on rafts and those standing on the shore, those waiting/writing in detention and those writing from places of relative safety, those who lift their children to the sky and those whose bodies are at the bottom of the sea. Making Mirrors offers a poetics of belonging—to the earth, family, and memories packed into backpacks. The poems go beyond refugee/citizen binaries and illuminate exile as a forced/creative space. As the refugee crisis fades from the front page of newspapers, this collection is a plea against historical amnesia and inertia; the poems are an antidote that reaches beyond despair to renewed action. Contributors include: Abbas Sheikhi • Abu Bakr Khaal • Adele Ne Jame • Ahmad Almallah • Ahmed • Qaisania • Angela Farmer • Baha’ Budair • Becky Thompson • Bronwen Griffiths • Eman Abedelhadi • Fadwa Soleiman • Fady Joudah • Fatima Al Hassan • Fouad Mohammed Fouad • Gbenga Adesina • Golan Haji • Hajer Almosleh • Hayan Charara • Ibtisam Barakat • Jehan Bseiso • Jose A. Alcantara • Lena Khalaf Tuffaha • Lisa Suhair Majaj • Marilyn Hacker • Marisa Frasca • Merna Ann Hecht • Mohsen Emadi • Mootacem Bellah Mhiri • Naomi Shihab Nye • Nathalie Handal • Nawwar Kamal Al Hassani • Nisreen Aj • Nora Barghati • Omar Mousa Alsayyed • Rewa Zeinati • Ruth Awad • Saad Abdullah • Sanaa Shuaybe • Sara Abou Rashed • Sara Saleh • Sharif S. Elmusa • Sholeh Wolpé • Zeina Azzam • Zeina Hashem Beck • Zoe Holman Making Mirrors began on two continents, envisioned by Palestinian poet and aid worker, Jehan Bseiso, and Becky Thompson, a US-based poet changed by months of greeting refugees after their perilous journey across the Aegean Sea. This anthology uses mirrors to reflect imagistic connections that allow us to see ourselves in each other, those on rafts and those standing on the shore, those waiting/writing in detention and those writing from places of relative safety, those who lift their children to the sky and those whose bodies are at the bottom of the sea. Making Mirrors offers a poetics of belonging—to the earth, family, and memories packed into backpacks. The poems go beyond refugee/citizen binaries and illuminate exile as a forced/creative space. As the refugee crisis fades from the front page of newspapers, this collection is a plea against historical amnesia and inertia; the poems are an antidote that reaches beyond despair to renewed action. Contributors include: Abbas Sheikhi • Abu Bakr Khaal • Adele Ne Jame • Ahmad Almallah • Ahmed Qaisania • Angela Farmer • Baha’ Budair • Becky Thompson • Bronwen Griffiths • Eman Abedelhadi • Fadwa Soleiman • Fady Joudah • Fatima Al Hassan • Fouad Mohammed Fouad • Gbenga Adesina • Golan Haji • Hajer Almosleh • Hayan Charara • Ibtisam Barakat • Jehan Bseiso • Jose A. Alcantara • Lena Khalaf Tuffaha • Lisa Suhair Majaj • Marilyn Hacker • Marisa Frasca • Merna Ann Hecht • Mohsen Emadi • Mootacem Bellah Mhiri • Naomi Shihab Nye • Nathalie Handal • Nawwar Kamal Al Hassani • Nisreen Aj • Nora Barghati • Omar Mousa Alsayyed • Rewa Zeinati • Ruth Awad • Saad Abdullah • Sanaa Shuaybe • Sara Abou Rashed • Sara Saleh • Sharif S. Elmusa • Sholeh Wolpé • Zeina Azzam • Zeina Hashem Beck • Zoe Holman