A Phenomenal Book Club Pick
TIME • Best Books of the Month
Vulture • Most Anticipated Books 2022
Goodreads • Hot and Fresh: 60 Highly Anticipated Debut Novels
Ms. Magazine • Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest of Us 2022
SheReads.com • Best Books Coming in Summer 2022
Essence • 18 New Books We Can’t Wait To Read This Summer
An extraordinary debut novel shot through with remarkable nuance and tenderness, Big Girl traces the intergenerational hungers of the profoundly lovable Malaya Clondon.
“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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
TIME • Best Books of the Month
Vulture • Most Anticipated Books 2022
Goodreads • Hot and Fresh: 60 Highly Anticipated Debut Novels
Ms. Magazine • Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest of Us 2022
SheReads.com • Best Books Coming in Summer 2022
Essence • 18 New Books We Can’t Wait To Read This Summer
An extraordinary debut novel shot through with remarkable nuance and tenderness, Big Girl traces the intergenerational hungers of the profoundly lovable Malaya Clondon.
“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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"I ate this up in one greedy, joyous gulp. I fell in love with Maya Clondon from the very first page. This book is hilariously funny and quietly devastating--a compelling narrative about what it means to define ourselves and make space for our bodies as women." - Nicole Dennis-Benn
"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. The sound, the expansiveness of the whispers, the critical, brilliant, sometimes bruising, beautiful Black girlness explored in this novel is literally second to none... I know I have just read and reread a new American classic that we as a culture and country desperately need. Believe that." - Kiese Laymon
"What I love most about this book is the depth of each character. I'll never forget Malaya Clondon, but the family that surrounds her is just as complex and memorable. This is a beautiful, profound, and moving novel that I'll be thinking about for a very long time." - Liz Moore
"Mecca Jamilah Sullivan's Big Girl is a touching meditation on youth. Malaya, our protagonist, is remarkable as she carries forth growing into herself despite the many obstacles thrown her way. I was immersed in this evocative novel. Even as she poignantly depicts the turmoil in Malaya's life, Sullivan reminds us that there is room to laugh, for the world is made up of beautiful, sometimes inappropriate, often hilarious folks! Malaya's story will stay with you long after the novel is through." - Chinelo Okparanta
"Mecca Jamilah Sullivan has given us a gift as big, beautiful and complicated as living itself, filled with everyday people who in her 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. I found myself cheering for Percy, Nyela, the Harlem streets and of course, for Malaya. Lovely." - Jacqueline Woodson
"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. The sound, the expansiveness of the whispers, the critical, brilliant, sometimes bruising, beautiful Black girlness explored in this novel is literally second to none... I know I have just read and reread a new American classic that we as a culture and country desperately need. Believe that." - Kiese Laymon
"What I love most about this book is the depth of each character. I'll never forget Malaya Clondon, but the family that surrounds her is just as complex and memorable. This is a beautiful, profound, and moving novel that I'll be thinking about for a very long time." - Liz Moore
"Mecca Jamilah Sullivan's Big Girl is a touching meditation on youth. Malaya, our protagonist, is remarkable as she carries forth growing into herself despite the many obstacles thrown her way. I was immersed in this evocative novel. Even as she poignantly depicts the turmoil in Malaya's life, Sullivan reminds us that there is room to laugh, for the world is made up of beautiful, sometimes inappropriate, often hilarious folks! Malaya's story will stay with you long after the novel is through." - Chinelo Okparanta
"Mecca Jamilah Sullivan has given us a gift as big, beautiful and complicated as living itself, filled with everyday people who in her 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. I found myself cheering for Percy, Nyela, the Harlem streets and of course, for Malaya. Lovely." - Jacqueline Woodson
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