Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within explores how eating disorders, or eating imbalances, as author Alishia McCullough aptly calls them, flourish under white, Western capitalist power structures, and have a unique impact on Black and brown women. McCullough investigates the origins of our negative relationships with food and our bodies, and shares the tools we can employ to reach healing transformation.
McCullough, a licensed clinical mental health therapist and founder of Black and Embodied Counseling and Consulting, is profoundly engaging and empathetic. “Embodiment,” the core principle of McCullough’s counseling philosophy, means self-acceptance that stems from connecting the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of ourselves. She offers new language for clinical terms, writing, “It is not that our eating is disordered, it’s that our relationship to our bodies and how we have come to nourish ourselves has become fragmented and created imbalance within us.” She’s specifically concerned with how historical forces have caused this fragmentation. For example, body-hatred as experienced by Black people can be traced to chattel slavery, lack of land ownership and food scarcity; one way to process this is through somatic therapy, which McCullough defines as “a body-centered approach that examines the mind-body connection.”
This book serves as a much-needed foil to the misinformation and stigma against fat people, especially Black and Indigenous women in larger bodies. Along with sharing her own experiences in these areas, McCullough covers subjects like patriarchal indoctrination, body-shaming, fatphobia and Black beauty standards. As much as Reclaiming the Black Body is a historical and sociocultural study, it’s also a deeply insightful guide for people of color struggling with body image, self-worth and confusion around what is healthy. It takes sharp aim at diet culture, self-imposed eating restrictions and so-called “health journeys” popular in Western society. In guided practice segments at the end of each chapter, McCullough turns to the reader and asks questions to help them reflect on how food and body insecurity have played a role in their lives.
McCullough specifically addresses Black women throughout: “You are dealing with a normal adaptive response to surviving in a system that was invented to deem your existence as something that should not have survived past the plantation,” she insists, adding, “I repeat: It is not your fault.” Innovative and groundbreaking, Reclaiming the Black Body asks us to consider the ways in which we are disconnected from ourselves and why. Embodiment is a lifelong revolutionary act that requires support and self-compassion. McCullough assures us that it’s worth it, and there is hope and healing ahead.
