Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is a writer and professor born and raised in Harlem, New York. She now resides in Washington DC, where she teaches African American poetry and poetics, Black queer and feminist literatures, and creative writing at Georgetown University. In 2015, she published the short story collection Blue Talk & Love, which won the Judith Markowitz award for emerging new LGBTQ writers. Her first nonfiction book, The Poetics of Difference, was published in 2021 and explores the writing of Black queer women. Her debut novel, Big Girl, follows the tender, fervent and food-loving Malaya, who comes of age in 1990s Harlem at the height of fad diets, hip-hop and gentrification, and has been shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel prize, the Gotham Book prize and the Lambda award.
Where did the idea for a story centred on weight and body image begin?
The first draft was my master’s thesis. But the truth is that the core and heart of the story began many years before that, when I was this big Black girl growing up in Harlem, having these experiences and understanding that my body seemed to mean a lot of different things to the people around me. Like all kids, I was coming to recognise that my body was my own to a certain degree and yet it clearly had this effect on others.
The protagonist, Malaya, is eight years old at the beginning of the novel. What compelled you to start the narrative from that particular age?
[Kids are] observing [at that age], constantly learning and developing critical perspectives. When we first meet Malaya, she’s at this Weight Watchers meeting. It’s a very vibrant scene. All of these women in the neighbourhood are connecting and bonding. Yet she starts to notice that what they’re connecting on is this internalised sense of shame. She doesn’t have the language for it, so she retreats to her imagination. That’s something that happens in those preteen years. The intelligence is there, the powers of observation are there, but what might not be developed yet is the language to articulate it all. The term morbidly obese, for example; she is still trying to figure out what that means in the same way she is with a term like woman. They’re always in the process of discovery.
You write about food, be it burgers or the Dominican sweet dulce de leche, in such a mouthwatering way.
There’s a pleasure in thinking [of] and in looking at images of good food. Malaya’s got this defiant inner spirit. Even if she can’t enjoy food, she can imagine it. [For] many of us, especially those who are growing up and living in diet culture, when you tell yourself you can’t eat something, what happens? You start to constantly think about it.
Earlier this month, the New York Times covered a new TikTok trend called “girl dinner” that features women eating plates of olives, meat and cheese instead of a cooked dinner. What do you think about such trends?
This reminds me of the “almond mom” trend. An almond mom instils diet culture in their daughters by saying: “When you’re hungry, don’t eat a meal. Don’t eat a snack. Eat an almond.” These cultural phenomena are good examples that show us that disordered eating and diet culture is still thriving. But one of the things that has changed is the fact that we now have more language to describe not only our bodies, but also all of the different social and systemic challenges to our bodies and wellbeing. Social media can only reflect back what’s happening in the world and intensify it. But it does further and deepen conversations. We have access to a wider array of images of what health and strength and beauty can look like.
Was it important to set the novel in Harlem?
I think of setting as equal to character. This is a story about this young girl and her family, who are constantly in a process of change and are embattled, but also vibrant and joyful. That is the case for Harlem in the 90s. The neighbourhood helps Malaya to affirm her sense of her identity, especially through hip-hop. And also gentrification and this sense of a threat. The identity of the neighbourhood is changing, though the changes may not be for the best. [Yet] Harlem has a refusal to give in to demands. It’s constantly fighting to retain its core identity. Malaya has a lot to learn from that process.
How did writing Big Girl differ from The Poetics of Difference and Blue Talk & Love?
I entered my PhD programme thinking that I would finish my PhD and write Big Girl at the same time, but it turned out that just wasn’t logistically [possible]. But I would come back to [the novel] between semesters or after major exams. But during that time, I was able to write the short stories that ended up becoming Blue Talk & Love. It was really important to me to start publishing more actively. The Poetics of Difference – the seed of that book was my dissertation. It was a very internal, solitary research process. I was working on Big Girl in between all of these other things. It really did feel like coming home every time I was able to revisit that world.
Were there any book characters you really connected with when growing up?
I’m fortunate enough that my mother had a small Black feminist library on the lower floor of our home. For me, it was Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy and Annie John, and Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo. [These books] were not written for young readers, but they featured young Black girls. Connecting with these protagonists changed my mind about what was possible through literature and also in my own life.
What books are on your bedside table?
Feelin by Bettina Judd. It’s about the place of pleasure in Black women’s creative practice. I recently just finished James Hannaham’s Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta. A really amazing dope novel.
What writers working today do you admire the most?
Kiese Laymon. He writes so beautifully and brilliantly in so many genres, which is not easy to do. You leave his books changed. I like to shout out folks who might not get all the shine they should. A dear friend of mine, Ivelisse Rodriguez. She’s a fiction writer who writes about Latinx girlhood, sexuality, desire and identity. A recently deceased poet whose work is so important is Kamilah Aisha Moon. Her first collection is about a family with an autistic child, and the intersections of Blackness, neurodiversity, class and the American south. Really beautiful, rich writing.
What are you working on next?
I don’t have a lot to share yet but I’m really excited about it. It’s queer. It’s also a stretch for me. In my short fiction, I do a little bit of speculative [fiction], veering into a kind of hip-hop magic realism but it’s something that I haven’t done in a long form. It’s also kind of sexy.
• Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is published by Virago (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
