What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology.(Book Review)

What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology. Eds. Donna Jarrell and Ira Sukrungruang. New York: Harcourt, 2003.

Jarrell and Sukrungruang offer an eclectic anthology of thirty stories and poems that foregrounds fat bodies. This collection is particularly refreshing given the recent backlash against fat acceptance, which has resulted in the discontinuation of fat-centric magazines, the closing of plus-size clothing stores, and popular culture's continuing love affair with ever-smaller actors and models. Some readers looking for profat sentiments may be somewhat disappointed because of the book's lack of explicitly profat pieces; however, the book's critical views on society's image of fat bodies is potent.

Perhaps the best thing about this fiction collection is the wide range of voices. Different ethnicities, backgrounds, and writing styles contribute to this book, particularly in the prose selections. Junot Diaz chronicles the story of a fat Dominican boy growing up in New York City. Jill McCorkle offers a very different view of fat life in "Crash Diet," depicting a teacher who unintentionally loses weight after her husband leaves her for a larger woman. Pam Houston focuses on a fat feline in "Waltzing the Cat," whose narrator is amused by her parents' attentions to and overfeeding of their enormous belly-dragging cat. These stories offer an array of perspectives from which to choose, and there is something for almost everyone in this collection.

Several poems are more truly accepting of the fat body. Katherine Riegel's "Nouveau Big" recounts the dream of a fat girl in which she is a Samoan sumo wrestler who quits wrestling after she realizes that she can achieve