352 pages | Paperback

Coming of age as a Fat brown girl in a white Connecticut suburb is hard. Harder when your whole life is on fire, though.

Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat.

People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but its hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesnt help. The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter-haired.Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter.

But theres one person whos always in Charlies corner: her best friend Amelia. Slim. Popular. Athletic. Totally dope. So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thinghe asked Amelia out first. So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her?

Because its time people did.

A sensitive, funny, and painfully honest coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme,Fat Chance, Charlie Vegatackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves.