Wednesday, July 29, 2009

LA Times Blogger on Bulimia Book

Carolyn Kellogg makes mention of Stephanie Covington Armstrong's new book, Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat, in a recent post on the Jacket Copy blog. The memoir is a chronicle of the author's struggle with bulimia.

Kellog wonders:

"[H]as Covington's book...gotten a raw design deal?

Bulimia, an eating disorder, includes a range of dieting behaviors taken to extremes: fasting, exercise, use of diuretics and laxatives and self-induced vomiting.

It is this last behavior that the cover portrays, with two fingers jutting up from the bottom edge. As if there is a hand inside the book, ready to induce vomiting in the reader.

[....]Are those too fingers as immediately recognizable as a vomiting-tool to you as they are to me? In the context of this book, aren't they horribly graphic? "

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What are your thoughts? Post them below -- or bring your questions to the author herself when she reads at the store on August 1st.

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