Namitha Rathinappillai, a Carleton criminology alumna, recently published her poem “Obesity Paradox” in the Toronto-based artistic journal, Excessive Bodies.
Excessive Bodies is a new multidisciplinary journal exploring material understandings of social injustice. As a spoken word artist, Rathinappillai said she taps into her lived experiences as a fat, disabled, queer Tamil-Canadian.
The Charlatan sat down with Rathinappillai to learn more about her poetry and discuss the messaging behind her art.
The Charlatan (TC): Can you walk me through your professional experiences since graduating from Carleton in 2021?
Namitha Rathinappillai (NR): I was the Carleton University Art Gallery educator in residence this past summer for Rajni Perera’s exhibit, Futures. I gave tours of the exhibition and ran workshops.
In 2021, I started working for the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity (CCGSD). Specifically, I ran a project called the Youth Network Project. I’m really grateful that I got to bring my artistic work into that position. Lots of the workshops I run with CCGSD have been poetry and writing workshops, where I’ve been able to integrate queerness and conversations of intersectionality into classrooms.
TC: How does your identity inform your artistry?
NR: Spoken word is an art form that is a facet of poetry and informed by lived experiences. When it comes to spoken word, you are walking up to the mic and sharing your own experiences. Much of my work is autobiographical, so these identities come up naturally. Even in poems where I don’t explicitly write about my identity, anything I create is informed by how I walk through the world.
TC: Why is it important to include fat, disabled bodies in artistic and academic spaces?
NR: Why wouldn’t we try to include the largest breadth of experiences that we can? It feels really radical to have folks take up space in institutions that weren’t created to anticipate or desire people holding those identities.
The goal of academia, if you truly are there to learn and broaden your worldview, should be to step out of your own lived experiences, hold empathy and learn from those who don’t look like you.
TC: Your poem, “Obesity Paradox” was recently published. What is the obesity paradox and why did you write about it?
NR: The obesity paradox is this line of thinking that the medical system believes is paradoxical. They see it as paradoxical that fat folks often have higher survival rates following major injuries, like heart attacks or physical traumas, because of their fatness. Fatness is often seen as a negative health situation, a disease or a failure of some sort. The way that it’s seen as a paradox is honestly hilarious. To see that pattern of survival and immediately call it a paradox is fatphobia encapsulated. I found that deeply fascinating, saddening and frustrating. I wanted to explore who and what gets to be called a paradox and unpack how fatphobia shows up in the medical industry.
TC: Through your work, what do you hope to share about bodies that are deemed “excessive”?
NR: The idea of bodies that can be seen as “too much” or “excessive” is the crux of a lot of my writing. I think my writing about being racialized and feminine can also be deemed excessive. What does it mean to deem a person, group of people or bodies excessive, and why is the connotation negative? This is something I hope to continue to explore in my writing. I think writing about fatness has been a very liberating experience. To name it, to seek pride in this identity and to know that there is a community in this identity has been pretty new to me. I’m excited to continue to explore it in my writing.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Updated Feb. 14, 2024: A previous version of this article, also featured in the Charlatan’s Modern Love special print edition, incorrectly spelt Namitha Rathinappillai’s last name. The online version has now been updated. The Charlatan regrets this error.
Featured image by Peter Stockdale.
