Published in 2009
272 pages
Stephanie Covington Armstrong is a playwright and screenwriter living in Los Angeles. Her commentary on black women and eating disorders, “Digesting the Truth,” was featured on NPR. She has written for Essence, Sassy, Mademoiselle, and Venice magazines, among other publications. Her plays Three Stories Down, The Outside Sisters, and The Long Journey Home have been performed in theaters in Los Angeles and New York. Her essay on bulima, “Fear and Loathing,” is included in the forthcoming anthology The Black Body.
What is this book about?
Stephanie Covington Armstrong does not fit the stereotype of a woman with an eating disorder. She grew up poor and hungry in the inner city. Foster care, sexual abuse, and overwhelming insecurity defined her early years. But the biggest difference is her race: Stephanie is black.
In this moving first-person narrative, Armstrong describes her struggle as a black woman with a disorder consistently portrayed as a white woman’s problem. Trying to escape her self-hatred and her food obsession by never slowing down, Stephanie becomes trapped in a downward spiral. Finally, she can no longer deny that she will die if she doesn’t get help, overcome her shame, and conquer her addiction to using food as a weapon against herself.
