The Body Is Not an Apology Book Club

a shared project of Big Blue Marble Bookstore and Springboard Studio

The Body is Not an Apology Book Club is being organized by Melanie Jones, Fat Activist and Certified Abundant Yoga Instructor, and Elliott batTzedek, poet, activist, and Events Coordinator at Big Blue Marble.  Through reading and discussion, we intend to support, educate, and share issues about body acceptance, spiritual growth, and loving ourselves to the fullest. (yes, pun intended)

We take our inspiration from The Body is Not an Apology Movement, an international radical self-acceptance movement started by Sonya Renee Taylor. The group is committed to cultivating global Radical Self Love and Body Empowerment that believes discrimination, social inequality, and injustice are manifestations of our inability to make peace with the body, our own and others.

Our book club will be meeting the third Thursday of every month at 8:15 pm at Springboard Studio, 530 Carpenter Lane, Philadelphia.  The book club will directly follow Melanie’s weekly modified yoga class “You Don’t Have to Teeny to Be a Yogini.” The club is free and open to all – the yoga class, should you want to attend, is $18/session.

Books will be available through Big Blue Marble Bookstore, 551 Carpenter Lane. Each month’s selection will be 10% off.

We’ll be alternating fiction and nonfiction, and bringing an intentional diversity of voices!

March 15 The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor, chapters 1-2

April 19 The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor, Chapters 3-5

May 17, Dietland by Sarai Walker

June 21 Shrill by Lindy West

July 19  Hunger by Roxane Gay

August 16 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad

September  20 Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living by Jes Baker