While McMillan Cottom was very successful as a graduate student, she became uneasy about how best to make a name for herself as being known solely as "the graduate student" felt impersonal and isolating. As she progressed and was able to walk, she also had to adjust to life as a black academic. McMillan Cottom goes into detail about the task of "fixing her feet" both literally and figuratively as she progressed in life. In the first essay, titled "Thick", McMillan Cottom describes her life story, from being "bow-legged" to being a graduate student, which she equates to being "not a real person". The eight essays are: "Thick", "In The Name of Beauty", "Dying to be Competent", "Know Your Whites", "Black Is Over (Or, Special Black)", "The Price of Fabulousness", "Black Girlhood, Interrupted", and "Girl 6". The collection includes eight essays and covers as variety of topics, including blackness (particularly her experiences as a black woman), politics, beauty (and ugliness), and race relations, and many more personal/political topics.
McMillan Cottom explained the title of the book in an interview with WBUR: "There's this category out there that we think of as 'thick.' But there's also, one of the plays on the title essay is that idea that I also wanted to connect how we move through the world physically as women, with black women's bodies in this world, and connect that to our political thought and the way that we think and approach the world." Black womanhood and black girlhood are two prominent themes. McMillan Cottom centers her personal experience as a Southern black public intellectual, and writes on topics such as the loss of a child, sexual abuse, body image, and beauty politics. Thick: And Other Essays is a collection of essays "about how American culture treats black women". Published in 2019 by The New Press, Thick was a finalist for that year's National Book Award. The book explores a range of topics, including black womanhood, body image, and McMillan Cottom's experience as a Southern black woman academic. Thick: And Other Essays is a collection of essays by the American sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom.
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