Hey y’all. You ever meet someone and just know you need to get to know them better? Well, that was exactly the feeling I got when I (virtually) ran into Athia. And thank goodness, because this bright and shiny person is a real gem!

In this conversation, we get into the writing that made me need to make friends with her, the promise of ascension with the achievement of thinness, and bang the gong for our need and desire to hear all the fatstories. Athia shares so much depth of thought, critical analysis, and candidness around fatness, dieting, being the elephant in the room, and everything in between you can’t miss this one.

May you enjoy listening to it at least as much as I did recording it!

Fattening Up Decolonization: A Conversation with Athia Choudhury

by Tiana Dodson

Photo of Athia Choudhury

Athia N. Choudhury is an unapologetic Gemini dreaming and writing about fattening and cripping the decolonial horizon. She is a doctoral candidate in American Studies and Ethnicity with a graduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality at the University of Southern California. Athia specializes in Transnational Feminisms and Postcolonial Theory with emphasis on 20thcentury body politics and militarized food cultures. She has taught courses on race, gender, and affect at both the University of Southern California and Pomona College. Her writing is published or forthcoming in theJournal of Transnational American Studies, Routledge Fat Studies Handbook, Disability Studies Quarterly,andTranslations: Special Publication on Fat. 

You can find her online here:

Her website: www.athiachoudhury.com