Mixed Messages: When Food is Love in Your Family but Your Body is a Problem featuring Michelle Yang

Michelle Yang joins The Body Myth for a conversation about immigrating to the US as a child and feeling she didn’t conform to Western expectations about how she was supposed to look, growing up in a home where food was love but her father monitored her body size, and her advocacy work on the intersection of Asian American identity, feminism, and mental health.

 

Also in this episode:

-How Michelle embraced her bipolar diagnosis

-Her thoughts on medication and the fear of weight gain 

-Breaking patterns and raising her son to be healthy about body image

 

Michelle Yang (@michelleyangwriter) is an advocate whose writings on the intersection of Asian American identity, feminism, and mental health have been featured in NBC News, CNN, InStyle, and more. Born ethnic Chinese in South Korea, Michelle is a proud immigrant "takeout kid" who grew up working in her family's Chinese takeout restaurant. Her memoir, PHOENIX GIRL: HOW A FAT ASIAN WITH BIPOLAR FOUND LOVE is forthcoming.

 

Connect with Michelle:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michelleyangwriter/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/michellehyang

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michelleyangwriter

Website:

 

Ronit is a writer, teacher, and mom who has taught elementary school through high school and whose writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, Salon, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, Scary Mommy, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about her body image struggles and the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was named Finalist in both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is also host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and Let’s Talk Memoir.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

Have a body image story you’d like Ronit to read on air or want to take the Your Body and the World survey? Follow this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZiXP1FklUkWaYg4T6IAqFKDRp6OIvef4be8SRHVaaWt044w/viewform

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Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Photo credit: Baran Lotfollahi on Unsplash

Theme music: The Lighthouse by Sounds Like Sander