{"product_id":"big-girls-dont-cry-a-memoir-about-taking-up-space-9780807022580","title":"Big Girls Don't Cry: A Memoir about Taking Up Space","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"[Swan's writing offers] not only an enjoyable read, but also the chance to think and reflect on the vast complex living entity that is the world.\" --Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Where do we belong if we don't fit in? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e A memoir about what it means to defy expectations as a woman, a mother and an artist, with a foreword from award-winning writer Margaret Atwood \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSusan Swan has never fit inside the boxes that other people have made for her--the daughter box, the wife box, the mother box, the femininity box. Instead, throughout her richly lived, independent decades, she has carved her own path and lived with the consequences. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn this revealing and revelatory memoir, Swan shares the key moments of her life. As a child in a small Ontario town, she was defined by her size--attracting ridicule because she was six-foot-two by the age of twelve. She left her marriage to be a single mother and a fiction writer in the edgy, underground art scene of 1970s Toronto. In her forties, she embraced the new freedom of the Aphrodite years. Despite the costs to her relationships, Swan kept searching for the place she fit, living in the literary circles of New York while seeking pleasure and spiritual wisdom in Greece, and culminating in the hard-won experience of true self-acceptance in her seventies. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSwan examines the expectations of women of her generation and beyond using the lens of her then-unusual height as a metaphor for the way women are expected not to take up space in the world. Inspiring and thought-provoking, \u003ci\u003eBig Girls Don't Cry\u003c\/i\u003e invites us to re-examine what we've been taught to believe about ourselves and ask how it could be different.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSusan Swan\u003c\/b\u003e is a novelist and non-fiction writer, a professor emerita, and a recipient of the Order of Canada. Her books include \u003ci\u003eThe Wives of Bath\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Biggest Modern Woman of the World\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWhat Casanova Told Me\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Western Light\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eStupid Boys Are Good to Relax With\u003c\/i\u003e. She is also co-founder of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, the largest literary prize for women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51298613657874,"sku":"9780807022580","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_d1cafd0f-11f6-430b-9567-2ce898567339.jpg?v=1747829867","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/big-girls-dont-cry-a-memoir-about-taking-up-space-9780807022580","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}