of how their love was built, destroyed, and restored. It’s the true story
of how the author lost her older sister to obesity’s devastation even as
she regained her sister’s love. Unlike other narratives about obesity,
My Other Body isn’t a story of victimhood, guilt, or the triumph of
thinness over obesity. My Other Body is the story of how love
survives the body’s challenges.
Joyce Vandiver weighed over five hundred pounds when she entered
the hospital near her life’s end. Strangers and surgeons looked at her
with revulsion and fear. But Joyce, the older sister, had been the
author’s hero, teacher, confidante, and combatant. The author
struggled at Joyce’s bedside to remember her sister before obesity
and to support Joyce as she lay fighting.
My Other Body weaves together three stories: the narratives of
sisterhood, of Joyce’s descent through multiple, fatally undiagnosable
illnesses, and of the author’s life as a woman managing a compulsive
eating disorder.
My Other Body is a story of love in the face of public flaws. Life
obese entails painful confrontation and forgiveness of loathing, worry,
and anger. 82 million obese American adults, plus the people who
love them, live with this continual self-confrontation, hoping for health
and love. My Other Body tells our story.
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