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Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

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Born

Harlem, New York

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https://www.meccajamilahsullivan.com/

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August 2008

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Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is the author of the novel Big Girl, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection and a best books pick from Time, Essence, Vulture, Ms., Goodreads, Library Reads, and SheReads.com. Her previous books are The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2021), the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love (2015), winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Fiction from Lambda Literary. Mecca holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Temple University, and a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College. In her fiction, she explores the intellectual, emotional, and bodily lives of young Black Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is the author of the novel Big Girl, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection and a best books pick from Time, Essence, Vulture, Ms., Goodreads, Library Reads, and SheReads.com. Her previous books are The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2021), the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love (2015), winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Fiction from Lambda Literary. Mecca holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Temple University, and a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College. In her fiction, she explores the intellectual, emotional, and bodily lives of young Black women through voice, music, and hip-hop inflected magical realist techniques. Her short stories have appeared in Best New Writing, Kenyon Review, American Fiction: Best New Stories by Emerging Writers, Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize Stories, BLOOM: Queer Fiction, Art, Poetry and More, TriQuarterly, Feminist Studies, All About Skin: Short Stories by Award-Winning Women Writers of Color, DC Metro Weekly, Baobab: South African Journal of New Writing, and many others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the winner of the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Glenna Luschei Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, the 2021 Pride Index National Arts and Culture award, and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Yaddo Colony, the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat, Lambda Literary, the Publishing Triangle, and the Center for Fiction in New York City, where she received an inaugural Emerging Writers Fellowship.

A proud native of Harlem, NY, Sullivan’s scholarly work explores the connections between sexuality, identity, and creative practice in contemporary African Diaspora literatures and cultures. Her scholarly and critical writing has appeared in New York Magazine’s The Cut, American Literary History, Feminist Studies, Black Futures, Teaching Black, American Quarterly, College Literature, Oxford African American Resource Center, Palimpsest: Journal of Women, Gender and the Black International, Jacket2, Public Books, GLQ: Lesbian and Gay Studies Quarterly, Sinister Wisdom, The Scholar and Feminist, Women’s Studies, College Literature, The Rumpus, BET.com, Ebony.com, TheRoot.com, Ms. Magazine online, The Feminist Wire, and others. Her research and scholarship have earned support from the Mellon-Mays Foundation, the Social Sciences Research Council, Williams College, Rutgers University, Duke University, the American Academy of University Women, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation).

Her debut novel, Big Girl (W.W. Norton & Co./ Liveright 2022) was selected as the July 2022 Phenomenal Book Club pick, a WNYC Radio 2022 Debut pick, and a New York Public Library “Book of the Day.” Of the novel, author Kiese Laymon says, “There are three books on earth that I would give anything to be able to write and reread until the suns burns us up. Big Girl is one of those books,” while author and activist Janet Mock observes: “Big Girl gifts us a heroine carrying the weight of worn-out ideas who dares to defy the compulsion to shrink, and in turn teaches us to pursue our fullest, most desirous selves without shame.”

Mecca is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses in African American poetry and poetics, Black queer and feminist literatures, and creative writing. She lives in Washington, DC.
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Average rating: 4.03 · 3,795 ratings · 662 reviews · 10 distinct works • Similar authors

	Big Girl 3.87 avg rating — 2,835 ratings — published 2022 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989 by Julie R. Enszer (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Audre Lorde, Pat Parker 4.67 avg rating — 488 ratings — published 2018 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought by Briona Simone Jones (Editor), Sangodare Akinwale, M. Jacqui Alexander 4.37 avg rating — 310 ratings — published 2021 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings from the Me Too Movement by Shelly Oria (Editor), Rebecca Schiff (Goodreads Author) (Contributor), Samantha Hunt (Contributor) 4.36 avg rating — 301 ratings — published 2019 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Blue Talk and Love 4.16 avg rating — 85 ratings — published 2015 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (New Black Studies Series) 4.27 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 2021 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	X-24: Unclassified by Tash Aw, Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Clare Wigfall 4.60 avg rating — 5 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Kenyon Review, Jan/Feb 2021: Volume 43, Number 1 by Kenyon Review, Diane Seuss, Rachel Heng (Goodreads Author) 3.75 avg rating — 4 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Prairie Schooner (Fall 2014) by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Joseph Millar, Yi-Fen Chou it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	More of Everything 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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The House of Eve

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Apr 07, 2023 01:43PM

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Dictee

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Jun 08, 2022 09:17AM

Quotes by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan (?)

“I know they're not like that now. If you asked me what happened between them," she said finally, "I don't know if I could tell you. But of course, nobody asked me." Her voice dropped low now, and she turned to look for the bus. "Your mother and father are both dreamers," she said, her back still turned. "That's what brought them together, and that's what's tearing them down. You'll always have to wake up at some point. And if you not ready for woke-up love, it'll break your heart.”
― Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Big Girl

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“You try so hard to keep everything together. This is what it is to be a woman. Everything is your job. Your job is everything: to be attractive, successful, raise smart, healthy children who are ready for life. To be available to everything. To be everything. And you work hard at it, at everything, at doing all this everything right. And in the back of your mind you’re holding your breath and waiting for someone to hand you a prize. Something that says, You did a good job—You did good at everything— and Someone appreciates it. If you’re lucky, you get little flashes here and there: a promotion at work, or someone notices you lost a few pounds. But you always hope for that one person who will look at you and see all the everything you do, and applaud.”
― Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Big Girl

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“Like most adolescents, she was reluctant to admit the tender truths of her life, constantly concerned that her secrets were somehow both more salacious and more pitiful than those of her peers.”
― Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Big Girl

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