Book recs!

A reading list to support body liberation & neutrality (updated)

Hey friends,

Years ago, I put together a book list with recommendations for folks interested in improving their relationships to food and their bodies, healing, and thriving.

You can find my original list here, but that list was before I discovered the importance of anti-oppression and liberation work, both in terms of the body neutrality journey, and in terms of the work we need to be doing as a culture. And since I’ve learned and read so many more diverse and liberatory books since then–and anti-oppression work has gotten more mainstream–I think it’s time for an update.

Plus, I’ve been trying to finish a body liberation book list (for the back of my own book) over the last few days, and I figure… why not share it with you??

So here we go: below is the current draft of my book rec list, which will ultimately be included in my book on body neutrality (which I’ll be revealing the title of soon!) when it’s published in the Spring of 2023.

How many of them have you read??

Body Liberation Book List*, by Category

*If you use these links to buy anything, I may earn a commission

Racial Justice

• My Grandmother’s Hands, by Resmaa Menakem

• We Want to Do More Than Survive, by Bettina Love

• Racism Without Racists, by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

• White Rage, by Carol Anderson

• How to Be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi

• So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo

• Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F. Saad

• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White people About Race, by Reni Eddo-Lodge

• The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander

• We Were Eight Years in Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Tears We Cannot Stop, by Michael Eric Dyson

• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? By Beverly Daniel Tatum

• An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

• Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, by Cathy Park Hong

Fat Justice

• What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, by Aubrey Gordon

• The Body Is Not an Apology, by Sonya Renee Taylor

• Fearing the Black Body, by Sabrina Strings

• Thick, by Tressie McMillan Cottom

• Hunger, by Roxane Gay

• Heavy, by Kiese Laymon

• What’s Wrong with Fat? By Abigail Saguy

• Landwhale, by Jes Baker

Feminism & Beauty Ideals

• Pleasure Activism, by Adrienne Maree Brown

• Feminism Is for Everybody, by bell hooks

• Ain’t I a Woman, by bell hooks

• Fed Up, by Gemma Hartly

• Down Girl, by Kate Manne

• Not That Bad, by Roxane Gay

• Appetites, by Caroline Knapp

• Hood Feminism, by Mikki Kendall

• Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay

• Beauty Sick by Renee Engeln

• More Than a Body, by Lexie Kite and Lindsay Kite

• The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf

Sex & Gender

• Life Isn’t Binary, by Alex Iantaffi

• The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice by Shon Faye

• Amateur, by Thomas Page McBee

• Pure, by Linda Kay Klein

• Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein

• The Purity Myth, by Jessica Valenti

• Come As You Are, by Emily Nagoski

• Mating in Captivity, by Esther Perel

Anti-Diet

• The F*ck It Diet, by Caroline Dooner

• Anti-Diet, by Christy Harrison

• Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

Important, but Harder to Categorize

• Oppression and the Body, by Christine Caldwell and Lucia Bennett Leighton

• Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson

• Decolonizing Wealth, by Edgar Villanueva

• A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielsen

• ​​Clean and White by Carl A. Zimring

These are books I recommend to clients all the time, because they support body liberation and neutrality across so many aspects of life. I hope they’re helpful for you too!

Also: please feel free to hit reply if you can think of a book (or person) you think needs to be on this list!

Big hug,

Jessi