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Interview with Donna Jarrell and Ira Sukrungruang, Scoot Over, Skinny |
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Donna Jarrell is a self-described fat American who lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Ira Sukrungruang teaches creative nonfiction at the State University of New York-Oswego. |
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Synopsis |
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Since Americans are the fattest people on earth, the fat, the formerly fat, those who feel fat, and those who fear fat encompass just about all of us. In this surprising collection of pieces, almost half of which are original to this anthology, some of our most lively, provocative writers explore the many folds of fat that make up reality.
From David Sedaris's hilarious assessment of his father's fat prejudices in "Fatty Suit" and Bill Bryson's ironic diet epiphany in "The Fat of the Land," to Anne Lamott's self-prescribed cathartic weight loss remedies in "My Secret Body," Pam Houston's rich literary panorama in "Out of Habit I Start Apologizing," and psychiatrist Irving Yalom's deeply moving confrontation of his own biases in "Fat Lady," each piece in its unique way deals with fat as a matter of fact.
Sometimes funny, sometimes angry, often illuminating and always engaging, these writers make a new and compelling case for why we should make room for a bigger behind.
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Interview |
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Q: Scoot Over Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology includes short stories from Pam Houston, David Sedaris, Anne Lamott, and other well-known writers. With an eclectic group of writers, what did you want the collective voice of this anthology to say?
A: We envisioned the anthology as a collection of fat voices interrupting the mainstream dialogue about fat, which has been primarily conducted by the thin, and concerns itself with primarily three issues: the physiological consequences of carrying excess weight; the means of losing excess weight; and who to blame for excess weight. This discussion is often inconsistent and influenced by a marketplace that stands to gain if we lose. We wanted Scoot Over, Skinny to bypass the traditional fat chat and give an authentic voice to the "fat experience," to the complexities of residing in a big and bountiful body. We wanted to illustrate that losing weight isn't just a matter of will power, that there are numerous factors that "weigh" into a person's size. Foremost, we wanted to present a case for compassion for the Fat, to envelop fat with the folds of the human condition.
Q: How did you select the authors and/or stories?
A: The primary criteria for the essays was the quality of writing, focus on topic, and distinction of perspective. We collected a pool of essays, then solicited and selected ones that confronted fat unflinchingly and treated the topic as more than a problem to be fixed but as an experience that exists and affects nearly every human being, directly or indirectly, at some point in their life journey. We included a variety of voices and points of view: the fat, the formerly fat, those who disdain fat, and those who fear fat. Within this variety are the voices of respected professionals—doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, journalists, humorists, activists, and, of course, writers. These voices buck the taboo and the traditional and discuss fat as simply a matter of fact.
Q: Scoot Over, Skinny is the nonfiction companion to What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology (Harcourt, 2003). What spawned the idea for each of these books?
A: The idea for the books emerged while we were in graduate school for creative writing at Ohio State University. We were both writing about fat. We agreed, and still do, that our fatness is by far and away our single most affecting life experience. Being fat inherently affects every other experience. As we wrote, we decided to explore what other writers had written about fat. We found a plethora of "fat literature." Resounding in this literature was a collection of voices speaking freely and unflinchingly about fat. We knew being fat was more than a matter of physically carrying excess weight. We knew fat was more than a mere mechanical malfunction of the human body, more than an intake/output equation. We knew that fat was as much a state of mind as a state of body. And now we realized we weren't just a couple of stray fatties feeling resentful about the unforgiving mandates and judgments of our culture on our size, but that an entire population of individuals had been shamed and silenced. Ultimately, we wanted to go beneath the surface of fat—what are you looking at when you look at a fat person—and to push aside those who have traditionally examined and spoken about fat and take the microphone for ourselves.
Q: How have readers reacted to What Are You Looking At?
A: The reader response has been amazing. We're both approached by the skinny and the fat alike with a warmth and gratitude for our willingness to broach the taboos and traditions of fat chat and speak back to contemporary culture. Both of us can recall specific incidents, but one stands out: Donna was reading the introduction to Scoot Over, Skinny to a group of writers at a conference. A beautiful young woman, whom Donna had noticed during the course of the conference for her remarkable thinness—bone-jutting, ghostly thinness—approached Donna after the reading. She grasped Donna's hand in her own, and said, "I can't tell you in words what this work means to me." This is the reaction Ira and Donna desired. This is the exposure of fat complexities that we sought. This young woman residing in an emaciated body identifies with the same shame and suffering over weight and size as Ira and Donna do. Who is "fat?" What does it mean to be fat? We believe the public wants to discuss fat in a more meaningful way, and our books seem to be satisfying that desire.
Q: Ira, you teach creative nonfiction at the State University of New York-Oswego, and Donna, you're a lecturer in the English department at Ohio State University. What brought you together as a team?
A: Our fat. Our love of reading and writing. Our lives. When Donna and I first met, we spent hours exchanging fat stories, just two fat people at the university café chatting about one of the major influences that governed our lives. We have been fat friends ever since.
Q: Weight is such a personal issue—and this applies to people who are underweight, overweight, or somewhere in between. Ira, your story "Tight Fits" recounts an incident with a pair of ill-fitting pants, giggling relatives, and a dose of humiliation. While most people would readily block out this incident, you've documented it. What are the personal rewards for sharing this experience?
A: "Tight Fits" was the first essay I wrote about fat. I didn't want to hide or block out any incident. To do any of these things is to say fat is something we should keep hidden, keep out of sight. As embarrassing or humiliating as it was at the time, that incident is part of my fat experience. By putting it on the page, it was a way for me to reconcile what had happened in the past or what I was feeling in this particular incident during this one trip to Thailand. The Latin meaning of the word "essay" is "to try," and I see all my essays as a way to try to sort these things out. In "Tight Fits" I was trying to present my fat as true as possible, humiliating or not.
Q: Becoming comfortable—or at least reconciled—with your body is liberating. This is a universal theme within many of the short stories. Donna, in "Fat Lady Nuding," you expose it all—literally—at a nude New Year's Eve party and walk away thinking, "I feel hope that I could live in this bulky body as is, no size contingencies attached, a hope that maybe I'm more than the big fat sum of my weight, that I am simply, but sizably, human." How does it feel to write about feelings and experiences that are often viewed as taboo?
A: Scary. Vulnerable. Yet powerful; it feels very much like I felt when I exposed myself at the party. Ira and I have often talked about the sense of coming out of the closet as a fat person. Others know I'm fat, but as amazing as it seems, I could deny it. I avoided pictures of myself. I wore loose clothing. Emotionally, intellectually I detached myself from my body and lived inside my head. When Ira and I were doing that writing in graduate school that we spoke about earlier, I wrote: "Hi, I'm Donna. Pleased to meet you. Don't mind the body. It doesn't really belong to me." Down the page, I added, "I can't bear to get on a scale, but I wake up each morning and weigh myself, mentally. How fat am I today? a) Too fat to be seen in public. b) Just my average fat. c) Could pass for thin except for the fat body."
So for me, fatness is not just the globs of excess on my body. I currently weigh 213 pounds and I'm 5'5". When I talk about my work, about being fat, someone will inevitably say, "You're not fat!" I pinch the six inch wad of blubber on my belly and say, "What do you mean, I'm not fat?" They mean that I'm pretty and funny and articulate and likable; they mean my other attributes have transcended my physical state and they don't think of me or see me as fat.
So I've experienced fat as a socially or culturally constructed state of being, a symbol for the essence of an individual's personhood. Am I feeling strong, competent, effective? I'm having a thin day in my 213-pound body. Am I feeling inadequate, deficient, and defeated? Ugh. I'm too fat to go into public. And then there are those individuals who are emaciated and can only see themselves as fat. Thankfully, I am not anorexic or bulimic, so I cannot speak to those issues even on a personal level, and I myself don't really understand why or how the dynamic has worked, but by diving back into my body and owning my physical fatness, I've been able to separate size from self. I believe physical fitness begins by loving the body you're in. I've said, "Okay, this one is mine. Let's take it from here, girl."
Q: What was the most rewarding part of creating this anthology?
A: For me, working with Donna has been a reward in and of itself. We met because of our fat. Before this, I was alone with my body. I was wrestling with issues that I thought were only my issues. When we became friends it was as if my fat world opened up to me. That's how I see the book—a way to build a community, to make a bigger space for fat literature and fat people and fat concerns other than what has been provided through Western ideals of body image and media portrayals of what is "normal."
Likewise, with Ira. He's been a champion colleague and partner, and it has been wonderful to establish a sense of community and compassion with people who have lived the "fat experience" and those who have been affected by it because of someone they love.
Q: Do you have any anecdotes—interesting, funny, or otherwise—that resulted have from working on this project?
A: I have an image, actually, a mental picture of a hillside dotted with bodies of all shapes and sizes. Everyone is holding hands and swaying and singing "Kumbaya." There are so many deviant persons that the height/weight proportionate individuals have been pushed off the page. Wa-lah: fat is the new thin.
Q: Are you working on any future projects together?
A: Nothing in the works at the moment, but we work well together and have been satisfied with the anthologies, and if the right idea or opportunity emerges I'm sure you'll be hearing from us. For the time being, each of us is focused on our individual development as writers.
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