If you don't have a credit
card or don't wish to pay online, there is a "manual handling" option in the online checkout process,
by which you can choose to mail payment. Books will be shipped to you
after payment is received and processed.
TAKING UP SPACE
How Eating Well
& Exercising Regularly
Changed My Life Pattie Thomas, Ph.D.
with Carl Wilkerson, M.B.A.
foreword by Paul Campos,
author of
The Obesity Myth
Original trade paperback |388 pages| $25 October 2005|Excerpts| Author info LCCN: 2005907296|
media kit PDF
Or place 1 copy of Taking Up Spacein your shopping cart
here and
purchase directly from Pearlsong Press by clicking on the button below. (International customers
please contact Pearlsong Press re: shipping.)
NOTE: We have a limited number of autographed copies of
TAKING UP SPACE
that will be used to fulfill direct retail orders (purchased from this
website) until these are all sold. Subsequent purchasers will receive an
autographed card along with the book.
Declaration of Taking Up Space
About
TAKING UP SPACE
Taking Up Space is a sociological
memoir about being fat and the physical, emotional and economic costs of
trying to pass for thin in a culture that stigmatizes fat people.
Making her own life a case study, medical sociologist Pattie Thomas,
Ph.D., with the help of her co-author and husband Carl Wilkerson, M.B.A.,
outlines how stigma limit and shape the life chances of all people and are
supported within culture.
Through narrative text, poetry, essays, photos and drawings, Dr. Thomas
shares her own process and demonstrates how a sociologically examined life
can be a source for personal growth.
An extensive resource section challenges both the popular reader and the
academic to further exploration.
Kathleen LeBesco, author of Revolting Bodies: The Struggle to
Redefine Fat Identity, has called Taking Up Space "a road map
through the minefield of the 'war on obesity.'" Foreword by Paul Campos,
author of The Obesity Myth (recently published in paperback
as The Diet Myth).
To purchase multiple copies of Taking Up
Space, click on the Pearlsong
Press Store link to shop our online catalog and enter the quantity
desired in the pertinent box.
You may pay online by Visa or MasterCard. To pay by check, please select
the "manual handling" option in the online checkout process, which allows
you to choose to mail payment.
Wholesale orders can
be placed with Ingram Book Group. Wholesale or retail orders can also be
placed directly with the publisher at 1-615-356-5188 or
sales@pearlsong.com.
New―$5-per-order shipping
within the U.S. for retail purchases from Pearlsong Press. No matter how
many books you buy, shipping is only $5!
Praise for Taking Up Space
...a feast of
information,
ideas, talking points, discussions.
Anyone who has struggled with
weight or who works with clients
who face these issues will find
this book challenging, disturbing,
and ultimately comforting as it
attempts to change deeply held
prejudices that for most of us
are unconscious.
Susan
Hammonds-White, Ed.D
LPC/MHSP
Nashville Psychotherapy Institute
2006-2007 co-chair
Taking Up Space
is among the best
books I've read on the costs of
stigma for fat people and society.
Written for the "average reader," it
is sophisticated, funny and touching.
Dr. Pattie Thomas, with her husband
and co-author, Carl Wilkerson, have
clearly demonstrated what we at Size
Matters, Too have been telling our
clients and radio audiences for
years—size prejudice is costing our
country a bundle in wasted human
resources, and accommodating size
diversity is good business, as well as
the right thing to do.
I will be recommending this book to
my clients and my listeners. It is a
must-read for all people of size and
people of all sizes!
Veronica Cook Euell
President, Euell Consulting Group, LLC
Host, WCRS (Akron, OH)
& online radio show Size Matters with Veronica
Taking Up
Space was so powerfully
and beautifully written that I did not
want it to end. With evocative and
witty prose, Dr. Thomas addresses
the issues that took me years to
learn: If we are ever to be content
with ourselves, we must understand
and challenge those aspects of
our society that tear us down.
As a
nutritionist who has had to
develop a new understanding of
eating and weight issues to
successfully treat my clients, it
is clear to me that Dr. Thomas
has captured the essence of what
true change and true happiness
are all about. A must-read for
people of ALL sizes. I will be
recommending this to all my
clients,
Karin
Kratina, Ph.D., R.D., LD/N
Nutrition Therapist, Author, Speaker
Nutrition Coordinator, Eating Disorders
Program, University of Florida
Thomas's incisive blend of
sociological inquiry and personal
narrative amounts to a provocative
treatise on fat oppression in our
culture. Taking Up Space is a kind
of roadmap through the minefield
of the "war on obesity," and it
offers protection to the reader
ready to fight for cultural change
surrounding the meaning of fatness.
Kathleen LeBesco, Ph.D.
Author, Revolting Bodies:
The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity
Take it as a
given that we all come
to a new book on a certain topic or
by a certain author with expectations:
what the story will be, who will be
important among the cast of characters,
how we are likely to feel as we read it,
all the way up to how long it will take
to read. I came to Dr. Pattie Thomas'
book with 20 years of experience
reading stories of courageous fat
people's journeys from internalized
self-hatred and despair to courageous
self-acceptance. I have been uplifted,
righteously angered, and supported
in my own efforts as a fat human
being and activist by each of them. I
expected more of the same from Dr.
Thomas' book and would have been
content if that had been the case. I
also expected that it would take me,
at most, a weekend to get through
the whole thing. I was wrong.
Taking Up Space is an intelligent,
holistic treatment on the topic of fat
acceptance. Dr. Thomas has presented
her self-portrait in a manner similar
to that of some of my favorite authors.
But she has also provided the social/
political/economic context for her inner
and outer transformation and has thus
presented us with a rich and colorful
landscape in which her journey is only
one small part. Further, she points out
to each of us own our potential space
in the masterpiece and invites us to
use our own palettes to recreate the
world into a thing of beauty, recognizing
that we are already beautiful and need
only to own that knowledge. Taking
Up Space does exactly that—takes
up space in the mind and heart of
the reader, soothing and reassuring
even as it confronts and challenges.
Dr. Thomas' optimism renews my faith
that the work of one person does
matter, and that to save one life
(especially one's own) is to save
the whole world.
Claudia A. Clark, Ph.D.
Director, Association for Size
Diversity & Health
Psychologist, Counseling Center
Bowling Green State University
Taking
Up Space could be called a
memoir with a Ph.D., or it could be
called sociology with a heart. Pattie
Thomas brings to the table her
careful study and analysis of the
medical, political, and social aspects
of weight in our culture. To this she
adds her witty and deeply felt poetry,
as well as her revealing and personal
journal (and journey) on the path
to self-love. That path, she shows,
requires that fat people recognize
the bigotry that is aimed at them.
Written in a
lucid and readable style,
this book provides insights and
resources for professionals as well
as for those who struggle with issues
of weight and body image. Taking
Up Space should be required
reading for all those who want to
help make this world a better place.
Taking
Up Space is
the poignant saga
of how one woman has come to grips
with being large in a society in which
"thin" is worshipped as the ideal. Dr.
Pattie Thomas, with her brilliant writing
style, shares the pain of her battles.
Not just the emotional and psychological
pain of being large in a small world,
but the actual physical pain of two chronic diseases with which she has to
contend.
In
Taking Up Space, Dr. Thomas often
refers to herself as the reluctant warrior.
But as she shares her battle with personal
weight issues, as she bravely takes on
the societal and medical stigmas that
daily drain people of size, she truly
becomes a brave sumo warrior who leads
the way into battle against the poison
darts that are constantly hurled at us.
Dr. Thomas
is such a good example of
what our society does to a person. She
obviously has a brilliant mind. She is a
deep thinker, a very good writer, a warm,
caring person. But all that our brainwashed
world can see is the package that holds
her wonderful mind and heart.
My heart
cries for all the time that she,
and others like her—you, me, thousands—
have lost obsessing over weight when
we should have been using that time
to make this world a better place.
The personal
is political, and the political
is personal—Dr. Thomas offers her
perspective as a thoughtful sociologist
to examine the experience of being a
fat woman here and now.
A consciousness-raising group is packed between the covers of this book.
You
will not think the same way about your
own experiences after reading it.
Artful response to stigma!
Deb Burgard, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist &
Eating Disorders Specialist
co-author of Great Shape: The
First Fitness Guide
for Large Women creator of
BodyPositive.com &
ShowMeTheData.info
Health At Every Size practitioner
This book
has punch—from its personal
fat narrative to the social context that stigmatizes a proper identity.
I was struck with how powerful the story
became as the myths, poetry, and sage
advice conveyed both the dignity and
pain of a condition that is increasingly medicalized as obesity. Taken
away
from its place as a way of life and
alternative drama of experience, fat
gains embodies and personal dignity,
while also claiming a space in the social
world for one human variation among
many.
This is a story about acceptance, of the
fat self and its body, one in need of
repeated telling to others and to a public
that are largely silent on acceptability.
Jay
Gubrium, Ph.D.
Professor & Chair
Department of Sociology
University of Missouri
Dr. Thomas brings her
breadth of scholarship,the wretched open heart of her own life story and
the sublime artistry of her poetry
into this analysis of the life of fat people.
The book centers on her life and experience
but holds the truth of the difficult world we
fat people navigate in terms of attitudes,
projections and stereotypes. It is not a
dour read but rather a call for a paradigm
shift that comes from her own mind, heart
and body. The fat community is well served
by her voice.
