“[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
Where do we belong if we don’t fit in?
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
Susan 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.
In 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 6-foot-2 by the age of 12. She left her marriage to be a single mother and a fiction writer in the edgy, underground art scene of 1970s Toronto. In her 40s, 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 70s.
Swan 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, Big Girls Don’t Cry invites us to re-examine what we’ve been taught to believe about ourselves and ask how it could be different.
“A warm, generous, and sharp reflection on a lifetime of daring to resist the boxes that seek to contain us. Radiating with both defiance and tenderness, this book is a delight.”
—Janika Oza, best-selling author of A History of Burning
“Speaking as a fellow oddball, I think that this is the best book about coming to terms with your differences from the norm (especially for women), that I’ve read. It’s insightful, honest, and adept. Definitely, one of a kind.”
—Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley
“Riveting and vulnerable . . . this is the story of a woman who desired—who indeed had no choice—but to be big and beautiful ”
—Meghan Bell, author of Erase and Rewind
“Shot through with light, this book is an original treasure. . . . Susan Swan delivers a portrait of becoming and belonging. . . . By escaping the boxes she was cast into, Swan redefines what a life and a body can hold.”
—Claudia Dey, author of Daughter
“In Big Girls Don’t Cry, Susan Swan’s deliciously unconventional and snappily readable memoir, one of Canada’s best (and tallest) novelists trains her keen gaze upwards—at the astonishing ways her unconventional height has shaped everything from her relationships to her writing. A rewarding book for anyone who has been an outsider, forced to see themselves as they are—only to better understand the manageable scale of the world around them.”
—Ian Brown, author of Sixty
“[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
“An exuberant meditation on feminism, sex, friendship, motherhood and writing. And learning to stand tall.”
—Susan Coyne
“Big Girls Don’t Cry—by turns hilarious, defiant, and tender—is the indelible portrait of both an exhilarating era in the arts in North America and an inspiring feminist writer’s fierce, rich life. I devoured it.”
—Claire Messud, author of The Emperor’s Children
- “Standing Tall: On the Value and Importance of Women Who Take Up Space,” Literary Hub, Q&A
- “Big Girls Don’t Cry, right?” CBC/The Next Chapter, interview
- “In Defence of Big Women Who Take Up Space in the World,” The Walrus, excerpt
- “To be tall is to be big – and to be big is a no-no for women of all sizes,” The Globe and Mail, adapted excerpt
- “Taking Up Space in Life as My True Authentic Tall Self,” Beacon Broadside, Q&A