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And the casual cruelty, she contends with every day. People see bodies like mine and make their assumptions. However Hunger by Roxane Gay is different because it provides a first person account of the reality of living in an overweight body. “This is a memoir of (my) body because, more often than not, stories of bodies like mine are ignored or dismissed or derided. It’s a frank, unflinching memoir that we can all learn from, empathise with and marvel at the national treasure that is Roxane Gay. Rounding it all off are some thoughts on feminism, race and class. I think she is an incredibly brave, insightful, wonderful woman, and I salute her.Īpart from her journey from childhood to where she is now, the book also contains commentary on the manner in which society treats overweight bodies, and the ways in which they are forced to navigate the world. While the author may be self-deprecating, and avoids praise of her strength of character, I have to disagree. I created a distinct boundary between myself and anyone who dared approach me.” I naively figured it would just be about her relationship with food. When I first picked up Hunger, I had no inkling that the book would involve Gay’s sexual assault. The sheer pain, suffering, and self-loathing are palpable they pour off the page and it will make you want to punch and weep and scream. Hunger is a memoir of the whys of her body, of sexual assault and rape, trauma, guilt, loneliness, family, victimhood and survivorship, and the lifelong process of healing. The main focus of the memoir is on the author’s weight and her evolving relationship with her body, using food as a defence mechanism after a horrific sexual assault when she was 12 years old. "Even at that young age, I understood that to be fat was to be undesirable to mean, to be beneath their contempt, and I already knew too much about their contempt.” I knew I wouldn’t be able to ensure another such violation, and so I ate because I thought that if my body became repulsive, I could keep men away. Some boys had destroyed me, and I barely survived it. The fairly short chapters also make it a slightly ‘easier’ read, in terms of having a moment to catch one’s breath amidst the distressing subject matter. One gets the sense that this memoir is as much of a journey for her as it is for us, the reader. She has such incredible talent – the writing is introspective, honest and thought-provoking. “Something terrible happened, and I wish I could leave it at that because as a writer who is also a woman, I don’t want to be defined by the worst thing that has happened to me.”
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I had previously heard of the author, and have always been meaning to get around to reading ‘Bad Feminist’, but ‘Hunger’ is my first proper encounter with Gay’s writing.Īnd I think, on the most part, I will let her words do the talking for me. Review: This is such a powerful, raw memoir, that I don’t think I have the words to do it justice.