From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.
“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, … of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.”
In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.
With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.
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What an incredible, painful, amazing memoir this was… I picked this up and 2.5 hours later put it back down – finished. I couldn’t have stopped in the middle if I’d tried. I was vaguely familiar with Roxane Gay, but – as, apparently, was the case with nearly everyone she actually knew – had no idea of the depths of her story. I was astonished at how much I related to so many of her expressions of fear and isolation and self-doubt and concern about what the world thought/how it reacted to her. We could not be less alike in life experiences, but there’s something distressingly resonant about her story and the realizations she’s so painstakingly come to throughout its course so far… She has a lyrical writing style, even when she’s telling horrific truths. That’s part of it. But she also has a tremendous gift for putting pain and fear into words – and it turns out, pain and fear are more universal languages than I would have liked to realize.
“This is a memoir of (my) body because, more often than not, stories of bodies like mine are ignored or dismissed or derided. People see bodies like mine and make their assumptions. They think they know the why of my body. They do not.”
D@mn this is some raw stuff here. Roxane Gay’s honesty about very real issues (both internal and external) will surely open up validation, empathy, perspective, and a line of communication for others. The human condition is complex enough but it can turn into quite the web when the stress of everything (and everyone) in your past and present makes you want to fetal position in a corner and turn invisible. She’s lived it, felt it, and is still going through it…and now she’s sharing it with the world. Read it.
My favorite quote:
“He said/she said is why so many victims (or survivors if you prefer that terminology) don’t come forward. All too often, what “he said” matters more, so we just swallow the truth. We swallow it and more often than not, it turns rancid. It spreads through the body like an infection. It becomes depression or addiction or obsession or some other physical manifestation of the silence of what she would have said, needed to say, couldn’t say.”
Roxane’s craft is not in question; her command of language is simply maginificent. But this book? This book changed me in ways that make me scared at the thought that in another reality I might not have read it. My relationship to mine and other bodies will never be the same, nor will my understanding of my own history and the literal and figurative marks it has left.
This book was not what I expected at all. It was so raw, so honest, so familiar. I think I had expected academic essays, and it was so much more personal than that. It was my first Roxane Gay book and I already have Bad Feminist ordered at the library.
We so rarely see people prepared to sit so fully in their truths, however uncomfortable it makes them and us. I salute Roxane for this – it’s such a difficult topic, so stigmatised, and yet the story of bodies and how we try to change or hide them out of pain is so, so familiar to me, and so important. It felt like a privilege to have something so deeply personal shared.
Didn’t like the book. The author suffers a horrific event when she is 12. She tells no one and sees herself as a victim for the remainder of her life (as far as the book goes). This manifests itself most noticeably in her weight.
I read this in a single sitting. It obliterated me. But I adored it.
(CW: many triggers.)
Honest and soul piercing
So important, yet so heavy. This description can be used for much of Gay’s work. While it is a heavy read, she provides important insight into the life of a women and her relationship to her weight that we as a society should seriously consider.
Powerful!
Thought-provoking memoir of a life-changing event and its aftermath.
I was floored while reading this book. In her new memoir HUNGER, Roxane Gay takes a very honest yet hard look at society’s attitude to obesity. Her candor about her personal history is extremely moving but also illuminating. Some many things about this book hit home for me. I wish the world would read this book. Bravo Ms. Gay.
Beautifully written memoir about bodily existence.
Thank you, Roxane Gay, for sharing your very personal story with me. I cannot imagine how hard that must have been for you but I want you to know how very much I appreciate it. Again, thank you.
I cannot fathom the amount of courage it took Roxane Gay to publish this book, but WOW, I am so glad she did. This is the REALNESS.