“[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.
“An exuberant meditation on feminism, sex, friendship, motherhood and writing. And learning to stand tall.”
—Susan Coyne
“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
“In this riveting and vulnerable memoir, Susan Swan sheds light into the psychology and history of second-wave feminism, as she attempts to break out of the boxes that confine her—including the ones of her own making. In a world that demands women stay small, or to play-act as men to be taken seriously, 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 and The Cassandra Project
“[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
“Shot through with light, this book is an original treasure. In her direct and mesmeric prose, Susan Swan delivers a portrait of becoming and belonging—a memoir of a life lived vividly and daringly in pursuit of liberty of expression in art and sex, motherhood and feminist justice. By escaping the boxes she was cast into, Swan redefines what a life and a body can hold.”
—Claudia Dey, author of Daughter
“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