Bigger : Essays

Winner of the 2024 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize, this large-hearted personal essay collection by Ren Cedar Fuller invites us to imagine a more generous way of being in the world, drawing on Fuller’s experiences as a daughter, sister, mother, teacher, and patient. A father’s hurtful rigidity becomes slightly more comprehensible when viewed through a lens of neurodivergence, and a mother’s well-timed lie allows her children to see an escape from fundamentalist strictures. Parents build support systems for their transgender child, and a disability that makes it impossible for the author to cry tears opens up new paths for expressing emotions. With disarming charm and good humor, Fuller charts a clear-eyed path for not only accepting but celebrating differences of all kinds. Bigger explores how we want the world to be as large and open as possible for the people we love—and how this kind of love expands our own world too.