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The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition: The Power of Radical Self-Love Paperback – February 9, 2021
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--Kimberlé Crenshaw, legal scholar and founder and Executive Director, African American Policy Forum
"Taylor invites us to break up with shame, to deepen our literacy, and to liberate our practice of celebrating every body and never apologizing for this body that is mine and takes care of me so well."
--Alicia Garza, cocreator of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and Strategy + Partnerships Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance
"Her manifesto on radical self-love is life altering--required reading for anyone who struggles with body image."
--Claire Foster, Foreword Review
Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies.
The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world--for us all.
- Print length176 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBerrett-Koehler Publishers
- Publication dateFebruary 9, 2021
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.52 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-101523090995
- ISBN-13978-1523090990
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About Sonya
Believing in the power of art is a vehicle for social change, Sonya has been widely recognized for her work as a change agent. She was named one of Planned Parenthood's 99 Dream Keepers in 2015 as well as a Planned Parenthood Generation Action's 2015 Outstanding Partner awardee. Bustle Magazine named her one of the 12 Women Who Paved the Way for Body Positivity.
In 2011, Sonya founded The Body is Not An Apology, as an online community to cultivate radical self-love and body empowerment. TBINAA quickly became a movement and leading framework for the budding body positivity movement.
With a B.A. in Sociology and an M.S.A. in Organizational Management, Sonya uses her work to disrupt systems of inequity from an intersectional, radical self-love and global justice framework. She continues to be engaged in issues of racial justice, police brutality, mental health, reproductive rights and justice and much more.
The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition | Your Body Is Not an Apology Workbook | Journal of Radical Permission | |
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Customer Reviews |
4.7 out of 5 stars
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4.7 out of 5 stars
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4.5 out of 5 stars
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Price | $13.02$13.02 | $12.79$12.79 | $15.61$15.61 |
Sonya's Titles | The Power of Radical Self-Love | Tools for Living Radical Self-Love | A Daily Guide for Following Your Soul’s Calling |
Editorial Reviews
Review
—Brené Brown, Ph.D., author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, Dare to Lead
“Poet and activist Taylor (A Little Truth on Your Shirt) packs important ideas into this concise volume on body empowerment. “Radical self-love is not a destination you are trying to get to; it is who you already are,” she counsels…The author’s sensible and empathetic tone will lend comfort to readers and help them to see that no matter what their body type, they are beautiful.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The Body Is Not an Apology wrestles you free from the habit of your shame and declares you whole, right now, just as you are. To follow its revelations and teachings leaves you different on the other side and undoubtedly more yourself.”
—Prentis Hemphill, founder and Director, The Black Embodiment Initiative
“From the moment I met Sonya Renee, I knew my life, my world, and the way I view myself and others around me would never be the same. The Body Is Not an Apology is essential reading for those of us who crave understanding and those who are already on the path to learning how beautiful and complex our bodies are. It will empower you with the tools to navigate a world that is often unkind to those of us who whether by choice or design don’t adhere to society’s standard of beauty. Her words will echo in your heart, soul, and body just as they have in mine.”
—Tess Holliday, plus model, author, and founder of Eff Your Beauty Standards
“The Body Is Not an Apology is a gift, a blessing, a prayer, a reminder, a sacred text. In it, Taylor invites us to live in a world where different bodies are seen, affirmed, celebrated, and just. Taylor invites us to break up with shame, to deepen our literacy, and to liberate our practice of celebrating every body and never apologizing for this body that is mine and takes care of me so well. This book cracked me open in ways that I’m so grateful for. I know it will do the same for you.”
—Alicia Garza, cocreator of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and Strategy + Partnerships Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance
“The Body Is Not an Apology is a radical, merciful, transformational book that will give you deep insights, inspiration, and concrete tools for launching the revolution right inside your own beloved body. Written from deep experience, with a force of catalytic energy and so much love.”
—Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and In the Body of the World
“In 2017, #thefirsttimeisawmyself was a trending hashtag and Netflix campaign. As a disabled woman, #thefirsttimeireadmyself may well have been this book. Thank you, Sonya. Bought two copies, one for me and one for my daughter.”
—Rebecca Cokely, Senior Fellow for Disability Policy, Center for American Progress, disability rights activist, and mom
“Sonya Renee Taylor is a treasure that this world simply does not deserve. The Body Is Not an Apology is the gift of radical love the world needs! We are all better off because of her presence, talent, compassion, and authentic work. Thank you, Sonya, for all that you do.”
—Jes Baker, aka The Militant Baker, author of Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls
“In these times, when the search for answers to the mounting injustices in our world seems to confound us, Sonya Renee Taylor offers a simple but powerful place to begin: recovering our relationship with our own bodies. To build a world that works for everyone, we must first make the radical decision to love every facet of ourselves. Through lucid and courageous self-revelation, Taylor shows us how to realize the revolutionary potential of self-love. ‘The body is not an apology’ is the mantra we should all embrace.”
—Kimberlé Crenshaw, legal scholar and founder and Executive Director, African American Policy Forum
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 2nd edition (February 9, 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 176 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1523090995
- ISBN-13 : 978-1523090990
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.52 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #9,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12 in Feminist Theory (Books)
- #78 in Self-Esteem (Books)
- #303 in Motivational Self-Help (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Sonya Renee Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, world-renowned activist and thought leader on racial justice, body liberation and transformational change, international award winning artist, and founder of The Body Is Not an Apology (TBINAA), a global digital media and education company exploring the intersections of identity, healing, and social justice through the framework of radical self-love. In her book of the same name, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love, Sonya lays out her radical self-love vision, arguing that all people arrive on this planet in a state of self-love before internalizing messages of shame and injustice from systems of oppression. Healing, Sonya suggests, takes place through reconnecting with our inherent divine enoughness, transforming how we live in and relate to both our bodies and the bodies of others. Sonya writes, “Using the term ‘radical’ elevates the reality that our society requires a drastic political, economic, and social reformation in the ways in which we deal with bodies and body difference.”
Sonya is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestseller The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love (1st and 2nd editions), Your Body Is Not an Apology Workbook, Celebrate Your Body (and Its Changes, Too!), poetry collection A Little Truth on Your Shirt, The Book of Radical Answers (That I Know You Already Know) (Dial Press 2023), and The Journal of Radical Permission co-authored with adrienne marie brown. She is also co-editor with the late Cat Pausé of The Routledge International Handbook of Fat Studies. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors over the past two decades, from her National Individual Poetry Slam Championship award in 2004 to her 2016 invitation by the Obama administration to participate in the White House Forum on LGBT and Disability Issues. More recently, she was awarded a Global Impact Visa where she served as an inaugural Edmund Hillary Fellow in Aotearoa (New Zealand) from 2017-2020.
Sonya’s passion for the arts and collective liberation began at an early age. She graduated from the Pittsburgh High School for Creative and Performing Arts as a musical theater major in 1995. She then went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from HBCU Hampton University and a Master of Science in Administration in Organizational Management from Trinity College. This education informed Sonya’s non-profit, advocacy, and activism career, which included work as a sexuality health educator, therapeutic wilderness counselor; mental health case worker; Director of Peer Education at HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive) in Washington, D.C.; and Capacity Building and Training Director at the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute.
For over a decade, Sonya built an award-winning international performance poetry and poetry slam career. It was in this iteration of her journey that she stumbled into her greater purpose. At the Southern Fried Poetry Slam in Knoxville, Tennessee in the summer of 2010, Sonya found herself in a conversation with a friend that would change the trajectory of her life. During this conversation, Sonya first uttered the words, “Your body is not an apology.” She did not know this moment of radical vulnerability with a friend would become a poem, then Facebook page, then launch an international movement and shift the cultural lens around bodies and justice through the power of radical self-love. As of 2021, TBINAA’s content has reached tens of millions of people across the world, with visitors to the website from over 140 countries. The digital media platform boasts an Article Library with nearly 1,000 articles from writers across the globe, solidifying TBINAA as one of the pioneering digital media and educational platforms exploring bodies, understanding identities and connecting radical self-love with global issues of intersectional social justice.
Considering herself one of many midwives for the new world, Sonya’s work is engaged in and responsive to the historical moment we find ourselves in and the world we have the ability to bring into being. This is evidenced by her ongoing public video series “What’s Up, Y’all?”, which tackles topics including but not limited to white supremacist delusion, “cancel culture”, abolition and accountability, attacks on reproductive freedom, and the existential twin crises of COVID-19 and climate chaos. The 2020 uprisings against anti-Black terrorism also inspired her to co-found Buy Back Black Debt, a reparations inspired initiative of financial and spiritual right relationship that in October of 2020 facilitated the buyback of over half a million dollars of debt held by Black people.
Sonya is a resident of the globe while maintaining her engagement in issues of racial justice, mental health, reproductive rights and justice, spiritual healing and much more. She continues to share her insights globally as a highly sought-after international speaker, artist and educator on issues of radical self-love, social justice, and personal and global transformation.
Honors & Awards
Edmund Hillary Fellow, 2017-2020
Quixote Foundation “Thank You Note” awardee, 2017
White House Forum on LGBT and Disability Issues panelist, 2016
Champion of Women’s Health awardee, Planned Parenthood, 2016
Commissioned as Planned Parenthood’s Centennial celebration poet, 2016
Outstanding Partner Award, Planned Parenthood Generation Action, 2015
Yerba Buena Center For The Arts (YBCA) 100 Honoree, 2015
Planned Parenthood 99 Dream Keepers recipient, 2015
12 Women Who Paved the Way for Body Positivity designee, Bustle Magazine, 2015
Four Continents International Slam Champion, 2005
National Individual Poetry Slam Champion, 2004
Board Memberships
We Wield The Hammer (current)
SisterSong (former)
Split This Rock(former)
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I’m so glad I have now. This book is one I will, as my friend did with me, recommend to everyone. It is worth your time, and your work.
This isn’t a body positivity book, but it does have aspects of that. This is a present day and historical account of straight up body terrorism and how we are all both steeped in it and accountable for it. Taylor walks us through a journey to self-awareness using the body. We all have one, and it makes the messaging digestible for all.
The endgame: radical self-love in the face of white supremacy, capitalism, and our own implicit bias.
I'm certain it will provide the reader one "a-ha" moment after the next in terms of how diet culture has shaped our thoughts/actions/pursuits. It will empower one to ditch the endless, fruitless (& often all-consuming) aim of changing their body to meet some ridiculous standard and start simply LIVING. It provides a foundation upon which the reader will feel emboldened to be their whole self, unapologetically.
It's a must-read for everyone in my opinion.
So. Why the low rating?
Personally, I was recommended this book by my Registered Dietician, who I'm working with to continue the process of recovering from an ED in my teenage years. She told me that this is kind of the new "bible" for self-love and self-acceptance and reframing the way that women think about their bodies. So, I went in, hoping that it would at least give me the tools to do <i>some</i> of that.
It did not.
Instead, what it gave me, was paragraphs of self-gratuitous expose on the author's own journey, and while that's totally fine, it was also interspersed with Wikipedia-esque lists of facts that, while astonishing if true, don't do much to actually educate you on the subjects they try to "hit home" about.
There's also a distinct lack of acknowledging possible counter-arguments. And maybe this is just left over from my years of being a literature major, but MOST good essays at least attempt to pre-empt the naysayers and provide more evidence to the contrary. They take care to qualify their claims and the sources they cite, so that diligent readers might take the time to do their own research. This book glosses over the issues with the HAES (Health At Every Size) movement, and provides very little context for the huge amount of discourse that's gone on around it since the movement's inception in the 90's.
It also pushes "Intuitive Eating" without addressing the possible issues this approach might have for people who are emotional binge eater/restrictors.
And, towards the end of the book, the author seems to make it plenty clear that the ONLY way to engage in TRUE radical self love was to become an active, vocal proponent of the movement itself. So that by the time I got to the end of the book, I felt like what I'd read was a very long-winded propaganda pamphlet, urging you to GO VOTE or UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU to DONATE TO GOVERNMENT BONDS. But instead here, we're being told to go forth in to the world and loudly, vehemently try to educate those who would dare to disagree with the sentiments put forth in this book.
Perhaps I shouldn't have gone into reading this with certain expectations, but I found myself feeling strangely "lonely" after finishing this book, wondering to myself, "Am I just going to be stuck hating my body forever if I don't go out and do everything this book says? Is there no personal, internal work that I can do to achieve this 'radical self-love' that the author seems to think is THE answer?"
And yes, it sounds ridiculous when you take a step back because healing and recovery is ALWAYS a personal journey. IT ALWAYS has to take place internally. So to insinuate that you have to go do certain things as part of this movement in order to achieve true radical self-love is... questionable, to say the least.
Now, I'm not saying that you can't gleam good, powerful, even transformative information from this book -- you absolutely can. It's just that most of the information provided is not new information. It's not even all that differently contextualized. If you grew up in a society, ANY society, that has the internet, you'll have come into contact with most, if not all, of the sentiments in this book. They're just presented in a slightly more slam-poetic way.
If that's your tea, then amazing!
But if it's not, it's susceptible to coming off as didactic and even downright condescending at times.
All in all, even though it wasn't a bad book, per se, I would say it was a bad "match" for me. I found myself more aggravated than enlightened, and it made me question all the progress that I'd already made in my own recovery journey.