“Big Luther” discourse: cultural longing and the signification of Luther Vandross in African American popular culture

References

• Adewale, Omowale. 2021. Brotha Vegan: Black Men Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society. Brooklyn, NY: Lantern Publishing & Media.
   Google Scholar
• Adler, Bill. 1983. “Singer, Producer and Grammy Nominee Luther Vandross Is R&B’s Heavyweight.” People Magazine Archives 19 8: 28February. 101–04.
   Google Scholar
• Andreasson, Jesper, and Thomas Johansson. 2014. Sports Science Review 23 : 91–112 doi:10.2478/ssr-2014-0006.
   Google Scholar
• Aph, Ko. 2019. Racism as Zoological Witchcraft: A Guide to Getting Out. Brooklyn, NY: Lantern Publishing and Media.
   Google Scholar
• Blount, Tommye. 2020. Fantasia for the Man in Blue. New York: Four Way Books.
   Google Scholar
• Brock, Andre. 2020. Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures. New York: New York University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Brooks, Daphne. 2003. “It’s Not Right but It’s Okay? Black Women’s R and B and the House that Terry McMillan Built.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society 5 (1): 32–45.
   Google Scholar
• Brown, Jericho. 2008. Idea for an Album: Vandross, the Duets, Please. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University.
   Google Scholar
• Byrd, Michael, and Linda Clayton. 2001. “Race, Medicine, and Health Care in the United States: A Historical Survey.” Journal of the National Medical Association 93 (, 3): 11–34.
   PubMedGoogle Scholar
• Catlin, Roger. September 27 1991. To Luther Vandross Fans, He’s Always in Fine Shape. Hartford Courant.
   Google Scholar
• Cooper, Mariah. 2017. “Patti LaBelle Opens up about Why Luther Vandross Never Came Out.” Washington Blade, December 08. https://www.washingtonblade.com/2017/12/08/patti-labelle-opens-luther-vandross-never-came/
   Google Scholar
• Cottom, Tressie McMillan. 2019. Thick and Other Essays . New York: The New Press.
   Google Scholar
• Dean, Aria 2016. “Poor Meme, Rich Meme.” Real Life, 25 July. https://reallifemag.com/poor-meme-rich-meme
   Google Scholar
• Eidsheim, Nina Sun. 2017. “Mara Callas’s Waistline and the Organology of Voice.” The Opera Quarterly 33 (3): 249–68. doi:10.1093/oq/kbx008
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Gentles-Peart, Kamille. 2016. Romance with Voluptuousness: Caribbean Women and Thick Bodies in the United States. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
   Google Scholar
• Gibson, Gemma. 2022. “Health(ism) at Every Size: The Duties of the ‘Good Fatty.’” Fat Studies 11 (1): 22–35. doi:10.1080/21604851.2021.1906526.
   Google Scholar
• Giorgis, Hannah. 2021. “What Makes a Black Woman Real? The Atlantic, September 17. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/what-stories-about-botched-plastic-surgery-miss/620069/
   Google Scholar
• Gregory, Dick, and James McGraw. 1973 [ 2021]. Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat, New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
   Google Scholar
• Hardy, James Earl. 1997. If Only For One Nite. New York: Alyson Books.
   Google Scholar
• Hardy, James Earl. 2005. A House Is Not A Home. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
   Google Scholar
• Harper, Kryseana, Chandra Osborn, and Lindsay Mayberry. 2018. “Patient-Perceived Family Stigma of Type 2 Diabetes and Its Consequences.” Families, Systems & Health 36 (1): 113–17. doi:10.1037/fsh0000316.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Harris, E. Lynn. 1998. If This World Were Mine. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
   Google Scholar
• Hayes, Terrance. 2007. “A House Is Not A Home.” Callaloo 30 (4):985–86. JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/i30132067
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Holloway, Joseph, and Winifred Vass. 1993. The African Heritage of American English. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Hughes, Elizabeth. 2021. ““I’m Supposed to Be Thick”: Managing Body Image Anxieties among Black American Women.” Journal of Black Studies 52 (3): 310–30. doi:10.1177/0021934720972440.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Hurston, Zora Neale. 1934. “Characteristics of Negro Expression.” In Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, edited by Angelyn Mitchell, 79–96. Durham, NC: Duke University Press . doi:10.1215/9780822399889-009.
   Google Scholar
• King, Jason. 2000. “Any Love: Silence, Theft, and Rumor in the Work of Luther Vandross.” Callaloo 23 (1). 422–477. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/cal.2000.0037.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Knobel, Michele, and Colin Lankshear. 2007. “Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production.” In A New Literacies Sampler, edited by Knobel and Lankshear, 199–228. New York: Peter Lang.
   Google Scholar
• Kyrola, Katariina. 2014. The Weight of Images: Affect, Body Image and Fat in the Media. London: Routledge. Taylor & Francis Group. ProQuest Ebook Central. doi:10.4324/9781315551463.
   Google Scholar
• LeBesco, Kathleen. 2005. “Situating Fat Suits: Blackface, Drag, and the Politics of Performance.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 15 (2): 231–42. doi:10.1080/07407700508571513.
   Google Scholar
• Lee, Spike. 2000. The Original Kings of Comedy. Hollywood: Paramount Pictures Corporation, MTV Productions, feature film.
   Google Scholar
• Lopez, Laura Alvarez. 2015. “Who Named Slaves and Their Children? Names and Naming Practices among Enslaved Africans Brought to the Americas and Their Descendants with Focus on Brazil.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 27 (2): 159–71. doi:10.1080/13696815.2014.992396.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• “Luther Vandross’ Mother Announces Diabetes Awareness Campaign, Divabetic,” Jet Magazine, May 30, 2005, p10.
   Google Scholar
• “Mary Ida Vandross, Fighting Diabetes,” National Public Radio, March 2, 2004.
   Google Scholar
• Mendoza, Katharina R. 2009. “Seeing through the Layers: Fat Suits and Thin Bodies in the Nutty Professor and Shallow Hal.” In The Fat Studies Reader, edited by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay, 280–288. New York: New York University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Michalko, Rod. 2002. The Difference That Disability Makes. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Miller, Adrian. 2013. Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
   Google Scholar
• Morales, Tatiana. 2003. “A Wake-Up Call For Vandross.” CBS News May 30. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-wake-up-call-for-vandross
   Google Scholar
• Muhammad, Elijah. 1967 [ 2008]. How to Eat to Live: Book One, Goodyear, Arizona: Secretarius MEMPS Publications.
   Google Scholar
• Nettles, Kimberly D. 2007. “Saving Soul Food.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 7 (2): Summer, 106–13. doi:10.1525/gfc.2007.7.3.106.
   Google Scholar
• Ollison, Rashod. 2006. “Luther’s Mother Bears Pain of Great Loss.” Baltimore Sun August 31.
   Google Scholar
• Owens, Kevin. 2014. So Amazing: Through the Eyes of Kevin Owens. Southgate Entertainment Group LLC.
   Google Scholar
• Patterson-Faye, Courtney J. 2016. “I like the Way You Move’: Theorizing Fat, Black and Sexy.” Sexualities 19 (8): 926–44. doi:10.1177/1363460716640731.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Plaid, Andrea. 2021. “More than Just Dry Skin: The Cultural Significance of Ashiness.” Vogue March 08.
   Google Scholar
• Quiring, Ana. 2022. “Going with the Gut: Fatness and Erotic Knowledge in Black Feminist Theories of the Body.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 50 (1–2).
   Google Scholar
• Ross, Marlon. 2022. Sissy Insurgencies: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Senyonga, Mary, and Caleb Luna. 2021. “‘If I’m Shinin’, Everybody Gonna Shine’: Centering Black Fat Women and Femmes within Body and Fat Positivity.” Fat Studies 10 (3): 268–82. doi:10.1080/21604851.2021.1907112.
   Google Scholar
• Shackelford, Hunter Ashleigh. 2021. “When You are Already Dead: Black Fat Being as Afrofuturism .” In The Routledge International Handbook of Fat Studies, edited by Cat Pause and Sonya Renee Taylor, 253–257. New York: Taylor & Francis Group.
   Google Scholar
• Shadyac, Tom 1996. The Nutty Professor, Imagine Entertainment, Universal Pictures, USA, motion picture. Retrieved at http://www.netflix.com.
   Google Scholar
• Shifman, Limor. April 01, 2013. “Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18 (3): 362–77. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12013.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Shiyanbola, Olayinka, Earlise Ward, and Carolyn Brown. 2018. “Utilizing the Common Sense Model to Explore African Americans’ Perception of Type 2 Diabetes: A Qualitative Study.”PLOS One 13(11): e0207692. Public Library of Science, San Francisco, CA. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0207692.
   Google Scholar
• Sinclair, Tom. 2003. “Will Luther Vandross Sing Again? Insiders Open Up.” Entertainment Weekly October 10.
   Google Scholar
• Stuckey, Sterling. 1987. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Sullivan, Mecca J. 2013. “Fat Mutha: Hip Hop’s Queer Corpulent Poetics.” Palimpsest 2 (2): 200–13. doi:10.1353/pal.2013.0016.
   Google Scholar
• Throsby, Karen. 2010. “The War on Obesity as a Moral Project: Weight Loss Drugs, Obesity Surgery and Negotiating Failure.” Science as Culture 18 (2): 201–16. doi:10.1080/09505430902885581.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Tiako, M. J. Nguemeni. 2020. “Race, Racism and Disparities in Obesity Rates in the US, A Letter to the Editor.” Journal of Internal Medicine 288 (3): 363–64. doi:10.1111/joim.13132.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Turner, Lorenzo Dow. 1949. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
   Google Scholar
• Tyler, Dennis. 2022. Disabilities of the Color Line: Redressing Antiblackness from Slavery to the Present. New York: New York University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Wallach, Jennifer Jensen. 2014. “How to Eat to Live: Black Nationalism and the Post-1964 Culinary Turn.” In Study the South 25. Center for Southern Culture Studies, University of Mississippi. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/studythesouth/25
   Google Scholar
• Witt, Doris. 1999. Black Hunger: Food and the Politics of U.S Identity. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Yearby, Ruqaiijah. 2018. “Racial Disparities in Health Status and Access to Healthcare: The Continuation of Inequality in the United States Due to Structural Racism.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 77 (3–4): 1113–52. doi:10.1111/ajes.12230.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar