Evette Dionne: “Representation Isn’t Everything, But It’s Something”

This week on The Maris Review, Evette Dionne joins Maris Kreizman to discuss her debut book, Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul, out now from Ecco Press.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts.

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On approaching subjects from a place of curiosity:

We’re taught that doctors are all-knowing, omnipotent geniuses who we do not question. When they tell you something is wrong, you take what they say as law and fact and you abide by it. What I found is questioning doctors doesn’t always go really well, which is understandable. I’m a magazine editor. If someone who never edited a magazine questioned me about how I should be editing, of course I’d feel offended. So it’s normal and natural for them to feel that way.

But what I found is, I really approach it from a place of curiosity: Can you tell me why you’re doing what you’re doing, and if my weight is playing a roll in that? So one of the ways I approach that is that I don’t let myself be weighed. Unless it’s related directly to weight, like I’m undergoing anesthesia, there’s really no legitimate reason why doctors are weighing you every time you go to the doctor.

So I just say I’d prefer not to be weighed, or I’d prefer not to talk about weight during the appointment. Those are hard things to do, because we think those are normal, natural parts of going to the doctor. Challenging that order, the worry is that they could list you as a difficult patient on your chart, and that follows you from doctor to doctor. But the alternative is not getting the care that you need. So what I’ve learned is you have to find the right doctor and being very up front.

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On the possibility model:

I love the idea of a possibility model. I learned that language from LaVerne Cox and Janet Mock. Possibility models are different from role models in that when we think about role models in our society we project so much onto them. They’re supposed to raise our kids, to be a perfect role model for children, for people who are looking up to you. Possibility models are simply living their lives and you can see within them a realm of options for you, a way of which to be, a way in which to navigate the world.

For me, my biggest possibility model as a young person was Queen Latifah’s Khadija James on Living Single. I wanted to be Khadija James. I wanted to move to Brooklyn and be a magazine editor and live in a brownstone with my three best friends. I wanted to be her. And not be her like feeling like she was raising me, but be that character in the realm of all that the character could be. Those were all possibilities for me because I saw her, and that’s such a powerful thing. Representation isn’t everything, but it’s something.

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Recommended Reading:

Drunk on Love by Jasmine Guillory • The Undead Truth of Us by Britney S. Lewis • Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

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Evette Dionne is a journalist, an editor, and a pop-culture critic. She is the National Book Award-nominated author of Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box, a middle- grade nonfiction book about Black women suffragists. A graduate of Bennett College, Dionne is based in Denver, where she works as the executive editor of YES! Media. Her debut is called Weightless.