Kingfisher Institute Reading Group

“They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that ugly is as ugly does. Both are lies. Ugly is everything done to you in the name of beauty. Knowing the difference is part of getting free.”

― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

Tressie McMillan Cottom

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor with the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill, a New York Times columnist, and 2020 MacArthur Fellow.

Tressie’s far-ranging intellectual interests include books, articles, magazine profiles and opinion-editorials but it is her essays that routinely shape the discourse. Tressie’s version of the essay – or Tressays, as her devout fans refer to them – is part revolutionary pamphlet, part poetic chapbook, part sociological analysis, and part call-to-arms. Her 2019 collection of essays, Thick, was a National Book Award finalist that reimagines the modern essay form. Tressays are powerful storytelling that make problems for power. Careful and poetic, Tressie explores the everyday culture of big ideas like racism, sexism, inequality, and oppression by giving us the language to live better lives.

Recommended Articles & Resources

Bhagwati, A., Bouie, J., Cottom, T., & Stanley, J. (2020). National Interests: On Exceptionalism, Oaths, and the Romance of the Center. The Virginia Quarterly Review, 96(3), 76-83. https://creighton-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1q4b688/TN_cdi_projectmuse_journals_765301_S2154693220300139

McMillan Cottom, T. (2022). Black Twitter Is Not a Place. It's a Practice. The New York times, p. A27. https://creighton-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1q4b688/TN_cdi_gale_infotracmisc_A702500238

McMillan Cottom, T. (2022). What the Reversal of Roe Means for Women's Work. The New York times, p. The New York times, 2022. https://creighton-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1q4b688/TN_cdi_proquest_newspapers_2681659251

McMillan Cottom, T. (2022). When It Comes to Gun Violence, Caring Is All We Seem Able to Do. The New York times, p. The New York times, 2022. https://creighton-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1q4b688/TN_cdi_proquest_newspapers_2669862914

McMillan Cottom, T. (2020). The Hustle Economy. Dissent (New York), 67(4), 19-25. https://creighton-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1q4b688/TN_cdi_scopus_primary_2010523510

McMillan Cottom, T. (2020). Where Platform Capitalism and Racial Capitalism Meet: The Sociology of Race and Racism in the Digital Society. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity (Thousand Oaks, Calif.), 6(4), 441-449. https://creighton-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1q4b688/TN_cdi_proquest_journals_2451349112

McMillan Cottom, T. (2019). Why my medical crisis wasn't taken seriously. Time (Chicago, Ill.), 193(4/5), 20. https://creighton-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1q4b688/TN_cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_2178127061

Siddiqi, A., Sod-Erdene, O., Hamilton, D., Cottom, T., & Darity, W. (2019). Growing sense of social status threat and concomitant deaths of despair among whites. SSM - Population Health, 9, 100449. https://creighton-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1q4b688/TN_cdi_pubmedcentral_primary_oai_pubmedcentral_nih_gov_6978487