Eating Our Hearts Out: Personal Accounts of Women's Relationship to Food

By Lesléa Newman

The author of Fat Chance and SomeBody to Love: A Guide to Loving the Body You Have presents 92 personal accounts by women of all ages and walks of life, who tell stories of their past and present... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 089594569X
• ISBN13: 9780895945693
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Crossing Pr
• Length: 299 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

eating our hearts out

An instructive and highly entertaining anthology about women's relationships to their bodies and food. In poetry, fiction and nonfiction, these authors explore what it means to be a woman in today's society. Some of the authors suffer, or have suffered from anorexia or bulimia, some are overweight, and some are simply "obsessed" with food and eating, but all in some ways have an eating "disorder," and an uneasy relationship with their bodies. The themes range from the difficulty of resisting mint cookies to a debutante's mother tucking a feather into her daughter's purse so that she may use it to vomit. Food in various guises is "my friend, my therapist, my lover, my confidant, my medic and ultimately my greatest enemy," as one woman writes. The perspectives are tough, tender, satirical, passionate and affectionate. The book is dedicated "For hungry women everywhere."

Eat, Drink and Read this Book!

A compilation of essays that are both touching and so real, you'll swear you wrote some yourself. Not just for those with eating disorders or even issues; it's for all women that have ever struggled with their body image and weight. I wish I had had this book when I was a teen because it really lets you see that so many of us are just the same when it comes to the love/hate relationship we have with food.

Excellent book, very hopeful!

This book discusses frankly the truth about eating disorders and women, from the voices of those who suffer from them. There is no censorship--specific foods are mentioned, sexuality, etc. No holds barred. Several lesbians are writing in the book, as well as straight women, so all suffering can pick it up and relate. Highly recommended!

A wonderful compilation of all types of food issues

Leslea Newman is an amazing writer who put out an ad asking for stories, essays, poems, etc. that describe women and their relationships with food. The writings she received were written from all aspects of "food issues": from the woman who occassionally eats too much, to the woman who is in the depths of anorexia. It will make you laugh, cry, and then laugh again. A MUST READ!

From Obsession to Resolution Essays by and about FAT women

This is a book about anxiety, heartbreak, obsession, and eventually, resolution. The text is a compilation of over ninety essays, stories, and poems, some very good, and some not so good. The book is not specifically about the experience of fat women, but rather the experience of women with eating disorders. The editor states in the forward that women would rather tell what intimate things transpire in their bedrooms than divulge what really goes on in their kitchens. She goes on to say that for all the media attention given to eating disorders recently, no one actually talks about what women do with food. This book definitely talks about it in intimate detail. When I delved into the book, it was with the assumption that these stories would include some elements of eventual acceptance, of coming to terms with food. This wasn't the case until about page 200. the first five sections of the text were so steeped in the obsession - either the obsession to eat, or the obsession not to eat -that I found I could only read for about fifteen or twenty minutes, and then I'd have to lay the book down. It was, quite frankly, depressing. I might even say that on some level, it was demoralizing. I found myself less and less interested in finishing the book, but I pushed on nonetheless. Happily, the book did reach a place of resolution. Sections with subtitles like "I Wear my Stretch Marks Like a Banner" and "Letting Food Off the Hook" contained the stories, essays, and poems I wanted to read: stories of acceptance of oneself as is. Stories that were worth reading. In "Are You Thin Yet?", author Jennifer Semple Siegel writes, "In essence, I have thrown out all the old diet rules. After all, generally speaking, people who are naturally slender and have a positive self-image don't put themselves through a lifetime of agony over food. And now, neither will I." Another gem came from Marianne Banks, in "A Fat Dyke Tells All." She writes: "Finally I realize that my size and what I eat have nothing to do with contentment, intelligence, humor, creativity, sexual desire or desirability. Curiously, once I accepted myself and food, all of those increased. Letting food off the hook, I extended myself the same courtesy. No longer do I allow what I eat to create my power. I stopped using food's presence or absence as a gauge to measure my self-worth. Food is just something to eat." These and the other thirty plus authors and poets whose work appears at the back of the book are well worth reading. The preceding sections of works? I recommend them only to the reader who doesn't mind being enveloped in obsession and misery. For everyone else, start reading at page 200.Terry Lawler Early