Charis welcomes Evette Dionne in conversation with Erica Buddington for a discussion of Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul. A poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender—and toward a brighter future—from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne.

My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.

In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black woman are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to diagnosis with heart failure at age twenty-nine, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image.

Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women: At the doctor’s office, where any health ailment is treated with a directive to lose weight. On dating sites, where larger bodies are rejected or fetishized. On TV, where fat characters are asexual comedic relief. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.

An unmissable portrait of a woman on a journey toward understanding our society and herself, Weightless holds up a mirror to the world we live in and asks us to imagine the future we deserve.

Evette Dionne is a journalist, editor, and culture critic. She is the former editor-in-chief of Bitch Media and the current executive editor of YES! Media. Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box, Dionne’s middle-grade nonfiction book about Black women suffragists, was nominated for a National Book Award and won a Coretta Scott King author honor. She lives in Denver with her partner and her two pets and they are likely listening to Beyoncé right now.

Erica Buddington is a culture curator that designs culturally relevant curriculum, writes and performs work that reflects the diaspora, and defies and decolonizes the status quo. Buddington is the CEO of Langston League, a culturally responsive curriculum design firm, that partners with clients like Movers and Shakers NYC, Google Code Next, Harlem Children's Zone, Achievement First Schools, Medgar Evers College, Pratt Institute, and more. Langston League is responsible for the Unofficial Black History Lovecraft Country Syllabi, which went viral during season one. Erica has spent the last decade honing her crafts: 2017 WeWork Creator Award Winner, Harlem Children's Zone Innovation Award Winner, 4.0 Schools Essentials Fellowship Recipient, and Hampton University's 2019 Notable Hamptonian in Hip-Hop. Using her unconventional methods, sustainable/responsive strategies, and her vast knowledge of pop culture, she creates engaging human learning experiences, like no other, in and out of academic spaces. She also hosts a Youtube Show for kids entitled "Decolonized" and writes for NBC's The Amber Ruffin Show.

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Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul--Evette Dionne in conversation with Erica Buddington