Overview

A powerful and provocative collection of essays that offers poignant reflections on living between society's most charged, politicized, and intractably polar spaces - between black and white, rich and poor, thin and fat. Savala Nolan knows what it means to live in the in-between. Descended from a Black and Mexican father and a white mother, Nolan's mixed-race identity is obvious, for better and worse. At her mother's encouragement, she began her first diet at the age of three and has been both fat and painfully thin throughout her life. She has experienced both the discomfort of generational poverty and the ease of wealth and privilege. It is these liminal spaces-of race, class, and body type-that the essays in Don't Let It Get You Down excavate, presenting a clear and nuanced understanding of our society's most intractable points of tension. The twelve essays that comprise this collection are rich with unforgettable anecdotes and are as humorous and as full of Nolan's appetites as they are of anxieties. The result is lyrical and magnetic. In 'On Dating White Guys While Me', Nolan realizes her early romantic pursuits of rich, preppy white guys weren't about preference, but about self-erasure. In the titular essay 'Don't Let it Get You Down', we traverse the cyclical richness and sorrow of being Black in America as Black children face police brutality, 'large Black females' encounter unique stigma, and Black men carry the weight of other people's fear. In 'Bad Education', we see how women learn to internalize rage and accept violence in order to participate in our culture. And in ,To Wit and Also, we meet Filliss, Grace, and Peggy, the enslaved women owned by Nolan's white ancestors, reckoning with the knowledge that America's original sin lives intimately within our present stories. Over and over again, Nolan reminds us that our true identities are often most authentically lived not in the black and white, but in the grey of the in-between.

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9781911648437

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Reviews

Review: Don’t Let It Get You Down ‘This fierce and intelligent book is important not just for how it celebrates hard-won pride in one’s identity, but also for how Nolan articulates the complicated—and too often overlooked—nature of personal and cultural in-betweenness.’ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/savala-nolan/dont-let-it-get-you-down/ * Kirkus * ‘Nolan’s writing on identity and self-worth is captivating from start to finish; her words will resonate long after the last page.’ https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/dont-let-it-get-you-down-essays-on-race-gender-and-the-body-2116601 -- Emily Bowles * Library Journal * ‘Like the 12 essays in Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body, Savala Nolan is powerful and complex.’ https://issuu.com/book_page/docs/0721_bookpage -- Priscilla Kipp * Book Page * Review: Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body ‘…the mix of cultural criticism and thoughtful personal writing will be just right for fans of Roxane Gay.’ https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-982137-26-7 * Publisher's Weekly * Review: Don’t Let it Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body by Savala Nolan ‘Personal and lyrical, this essay collection is full of anecdotes that echo and sentences that stop you in your tracks.’ https://utopia-state-of-mind.com/review-dont-let-it-get-you-down-essays-on-race-gender-and-the-body-by-savala-nolan/ * Utopia State of Mind * Savala Nolan Is Finally Being Heard Loud and Clear ‘Not only is it an important read, but also a delightful one that shows just how multitalented and impressive the author is when taking on subjects that resonate inside of her but also in the bodies and minds of her readers as well.’ https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/books/a37028643/savala-nolan-is-finally-being-heard-loud-and-clear/ -- Scott Neumver * Shondaland.com * Twelve revelatory essays probe with unflinching honesty what it means to be black https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/review-12-revelatory-essays-probe-with-unflinching-honesty-what-it-means-to-be-black -- Dolen Perkins-Valdez * San Francisco Chronicle * Savala Nolan Takes a Hard Look at the White Gaze and Its Blind Spots ‘Vulnerable, but rarely veering into self-indulgence . . . it is a brutal, beautifully rendered narrative. A standout collection.’ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/12/books/review/savala-nolan-dont-let-it-get-you-down.html -- Tressie Mc Millan Cottom * New York Times Book Review * 24 of the best new book releases in June https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/g15922606/new-good-books-to-read/?slide=24 * Cosmopolitan * ‘Please don’t call me strong’: notes on race, gender and the body – an extract https://gal-dem.com/dont-let-it-get-you-down-extract/ * Galdem * Savala Nolan: Don't Let It Get You Down review - finding voice in the liminal ‘Finding her voice, her faith, her self in the liminal, Nolan reclaims a mighty tradition and way of telling for us all.’ https://theartsdesk.com/books/savala-nolan-dont-let-it-get-you-down-review-finding-voice-liminal -- Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou * The Arts Desk *

Author Information

Savala Nolan is a writer, speaker, and lawyer. She is executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She and her writing have been featured in Vogue, Time, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and more. She served as an advisor on the Peabodywinning podcast, The Promise. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

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