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Unashamed, musings of a fat, black Muslim, Leah Vernon

eng

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Unashamed

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Leah Vernon

musings of a fat, black Muslim

"Ever since she was little, Leah Vernon was told what to believe and how to act. There wasn't any room for imperfection. Good Muslim girls listened more than they spoke. They didn't have a missing father or a mother with mental illness. They didn't have fat bodies or grow up wishing they could be like the white characters they saw on TV. They didn't have husbands who abused and cheated on them. They certainly didn't have secret abortions. In Unashamed, Vernon takes to task the myth of the perfect Muslim woman with frank dispatches on her love-hate relationship with her hijab and her faith, race, weight, mental illness, domestic violence, sexuality, the millennial world of dating, and the process of finding her voice. She opens up about her tumultuous adolescence living at the poverty line with her fiercely loving but troubled mother, her deadbeat dad, and her siblings, and the violent dissolution of her 10-year marriage. Tired of the constant policing of her clothing in the name of Islam and Western beauty standards, Vernon reflects on her experiences with hustling paycheck to paycheck, body-shaming, and redefining what it means to be a "good" Muslim"--, Provided by publisher

Preface -- Part 1: Good Muslim girl. The shirt that swallowed me whole ; Child support ; Vernon v. Smiley -- Part 2: Jezebel. Flushed ; Mom ain't mom no more ; Playing house -- Part 3: Life, unfiltered. Caged in ; Covering ; That time we went to Guatemala -- Part 4: Busting out. Rebel with a hijab ; Sex object ; Perfectly imperfect -- Part 5: Unapologetically me. To wear or not to wear ; Life in the day of a fat model ; Muslim girl dance -- Epilogue