Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Apr 14, 2017 Emily May rated it it was amazing

Shelves: memoirs-or-bios, nonfiction, arc, 2017, feminism

People see bodies like mine and make their assumptions. They think they know the why of my body. They do not. This is not a story of triumph, but this is a story that demands to be told and deserves to be heard.

How do I even begin? If I could give this book a hundred stars, I would. And no, not just because it is important and it is heartbreaking - which it is both - but because Gay is one of the best writers I've ever known. The difficulty was deciding how to use quotes without quoting the wh

People see bodies like mine and make their assumptions. They think they know the why of my body. They do not. This is not a story of triumph, but this is a story that demands to be told and deserves to be heard.

How do I even begin? If I could give this book a hundred stars, I would. And no, not just because it is important and it is heartbreaking - which it is both - but because Gay is one of the best writers I've ever known. The difficulty was deciding how to use quotes without quoting the whole damn book.

I was glued to the pages, completely rapt, as the author used words to create a plethora of emotions and reveal things about the world we live in. This is Gay's memoir from the time she was gang raped at twelve-years-old, to her later need to use food to build a fortress around herself, to her more recent life as a woman categorized as the horrendous phrase "super morbidly obese".

Mine is not a success story. Mine is, simply, a true story.

It is not a memoir that asks for our pity, or tries to manipulate the reader, it is simply a woman's truth. Gay's self-awareness is painful to read as she talks about experiences in narrow seating on airlines, in movie theatres or restaurants, or at events. The assumptions people make about her; the "concerns" for her health; the ultimate belief that as a woman, a fat woman, she just takes up too much space.

You can tell on the rare occasions when an author really lays themselves bare. Gay says the things that many are - for a whole variety of reasons - afraid to say. About rape culture, about fat people, about fat women, and about the fat acceptance movement. She says she prefers "victim" to "survivor" because she has been hurt and has suffered from what happened to her, and she doesn't want to turn into something more empowering than it actually is.

I do not want pity or appreciation or advice. I am not brave or heroic. I am not strong. I am not special. I am one woman who has experienced something countless women have experienced. I am a victim who survived.
***
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, that truth 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.

When she talks about the FAM, she considers what many fat-positive women and men are not supposed to say - that it is not a simple matter of deciding that one's fatness is okay and attractive. We do not live in a world that allows for that mentality to take hold instantly, no matter how much we tell ourselves that weight and size do not matter.

To be clear, the fat acceptance movement is important, affirming, and profoundly necessary, but I also believe that part of fat acceptance is accepting that some of us struggle with body image and haven’t reached a place of peace and unconditional self-acceptance.

It is an incredibly powerful memoir that is made even more so by the raw, uncensored truth Gay brings to it. Gay is not happy with her body, but also angry at the world for being a place that makes her unhappy with her body. She says she is not strong and that she is not brave, but I beg to differ. Writing a book like this in a world like this-- I'd say she's one of the strongest, bravest writers I know.

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Jul 31, 2014 Roxane rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author)

I haven't written this yet but it will be okay. Food is delicious.

UPDATE: I have created a Word File entitled Hunger_Book. I have copied and pasted many Tumblr entries into this file along with some ideas as to how to give the book shape. Food is still delicious.

UPDATE 2: This book is still in progress so your low ratings are funny. Is this a motivational tool? It's working.

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Jan 31, 2016 Debbie rated it liked it

Shelves: i-m-wide, memoirs-read, cool-chicks, lgbt

Really torn about this one. On the one hand, this is an amazingly honest account of Roxane Gay's life with an unruly body, as she calls it, which developed after she was gang raped at 12. She ate and ate so that she could get big enough to build a fortress around herself.

On the other hand, the book fell short for me. It was repetitive, for one, although I do think some of the repetition was purposeful--a stylistic choice. The language, to me, was dull. Plus there was nothing new on the subject o Really torn about this one. On the one hand, this is an amazingly honest account of Roxane Gay's life with an unruly body, as she calls it, which developed after she was gang raped at 12. She ate and ate so that she could get big enough to build a fortress around herself.

On the other hand, the book fell short for me. It was repetitive, for one, although I do think some of the repetition was purposeful--a stylistic choice. The language, to me, was dull. Plus there was nothing new on the subject of obesity or the politics surrounding it. The tone was understated--some anger and sadness underlying her words--yet at the same time it felt strangely unemotional. I didn't feel attached. But I will cut her all the slack in the world. She is revealing who she is, the struggles she has had--who am I to criticize the way she tells her story?

Racism, body shaming, and feminism are all touched upon, but the real story is about how the persistent PTSD led to loneliness, shame, hunger (of more than just food), and her weight problem.

She expresses a sort of quiet anger about the way obese people are perceived and treated. Gay has had to learn to live with her large body, which is on display to the world. She has had to navigate physically through a land that can't accommodate her size in many ways. Chairs are too small, for example, and if the chair has arms, watch out—they can give her bruises. Her body size makes everything hard. Short walks are too long and painful, stares are too hurtful, conversations are strained. Her recounting of endless humiliations is heartbreaking. Learning about the indignities the author has had to endure made me examine how I think of my body and others’.

As I said, most of what she said about obesity I already knew and almost all of the feelings that go with being overweight have been talked about before. However, her theme is groundbreaking in this way: Instead of talking about her food addiction, she talks about her body. It’s the first time I’ve heard the subject discussed solely from the point of view of body image. Seldom do people talk about their body. They talk about addiction and their difficulty in overcoming it. They talk about shame, self-control, self-loathing (which are all things that an unruly big body cause), but they don’t talk about how PTSD can change one’s body. In the past, I might have thought of PTSD as only affecting the head. Here we see how it blew away not only mind, but also her body. Eating allowed her to create a needed fortress while giving her comfort.

I found her description of getting a tattoo fascinating. And she shed some new light on the subject of bulimia. Her descriptions of her humiliations were the most vivid and well-described. When she got into general non-fiction rhetoric, my interest waned. I wanted everything to be first person.

Gang raped at 12. At 12! How do you survive that psychologically? The damage from the brutal attack will never disappear. She's in her 40s now, and she still thinks of her attackers, sometimes obsessing about the ringleader, who she thought was her friend. It is impossible to put myself in her shoes; what she endured is unimaginable. But one thing is sure--an experience like this will mess with your head in ways I can't begin to comprehend.

Gay's story is a sad one, but she isn't throwing a pity party. She just wants to be understood, and she gets kudos for her bravery in revealing such personal information, for showing her underbelly. I'm thinking that writing this was probably therapeutic for her.

How do you rate a memoir? Especially one where the author makes herself so vulnerable? I must remember that I'm not rating her life, just the way she tells her story. I admire Gay’s brilliance, bravery, and life, and I will continue to get my hands on everything she writes.

I wanted to love this one, I really did, especially since Gay's novel An Untamed State is one of my all-time favorites. No dull language in that one. It still haunts me. The novel was based on her experience of gang rape. I felt it was a way more powerful book than this memoir, but I'm not at all sorry I read this book. I liked it, just didn't love it. ...more

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Jun 11, 2017 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing

Beautifully written....

Tender, poignant and courageous....

Heartfelt, heartbreaking and brave....

Clearly, Roxanne's book deals with a dark, difficult and important subject. I can't imagine anyone more suited to explore what it means to be overweight.......
"in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen".

"Hunger" is a story that needed to be written.

Roxane Gay says....."writing this book is the most difficult thing I've ever done. Too lay myself so vulnerable has not been an easy thing ...more

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Jul 09, 2017 Jaidee rated it did not like it

Shelves: under-two-stars-books

I cannot jump on the bandwagon of this being a wonderful and empowering book.

Sorry folks but as Ms Gay continues to blame the world for her unhappiness there is just no chance for peace. I wish her the very best but I would not recommend this to anybody.

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Nov 29, 2017 Elise (TheBookishActress) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-2018, released-2017, my-personal-author-shrines, genre-literary-nonfic, that-important-content, 5-star, faves-of-2018

“I do not want pity or appreciation or advice. I am not brave or heroic. I am not strong. I am not special. I am one woman who has experienced something countless women have experienced. I am a victim who survived.”

This is one of the most powerful memoirs I have ever read.

I’ve realized that Roxane Gay is, while not my style as a fiction author, a fantastic author of nonfiction. Her stories are so emotive, so well-conveyed, so horrifying and so real. And most of all, so incredibly well writt ...more

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Jul 09, 2017 Whitney Atkinson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: feminism, memoir, favorites, favs-of-2018, made-me-cry, read-in-2018

I want to give this a million stars. I want to buy every one of you reading this a copy. WOW.

TW: Rape, anorexia/bulimia, fatphobia

This doesn’t speak exactly to my experiences—and I wouldn’t expect it to because Roxane and I have very different experiences and personalities—but regardless, this is the most validating book I’ve read to date about being fat. It might be the only book I’ve read about being heavy that confirms that I can be happy with myself just for me, not only when a guy loves me ...more

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Dec 30, 2015 Thomas rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, own-physical, biography-or-memoir, 2nd-favorites, feminism, five-stars, psychology, own-signed

I finished Hunger five hours ago and still feel such overwhelming gratitude for Roxane Gay's writing; this memoir is my favorite 2017 read by far and one of those rare works that makes me so thankful for my ability to read at all. Hunger focuses on Gay's fatness, how being fat has affected her life in so many negative and unfair ways, and the rape she experienced as a twelve-year-old that precipitated her weight gain. She has an enormous talent for confronting complex, ugly truths in her writing I finished Hunger five hours ago and still feel such overwhelming gratitude for Roxane Gay's writing; this memoir is my favorite 2017 read by far and one of those rare works that makes me so thankful for my ability to read at all. Hunger focuses on Gay's fatness, how being fat has affected her life in so many negative and unfair ways, and the rape she experienced as a twelve-year-old that precipitated her weight gain. She has an enormous talent for confronting complex, ugly truths in her writing and for injecting nuance into difficult subjects that we would rather see as simple. There are no clear victories or easy solutions in Hunger. Instead of cookie-cutter niceties, Gay offers a harrowing and honest account of her suffering, as well as the painful, slow, and necessary steps she has taken to heal. As writer Caroline Knapp does in her splendid memoir Appetites , Gay blends the personal and the political with great skill, showing how food intersects with feminism which intersects with sexism which intersects with trauma and so much more. A passage that exemplifies what I mean:

"Losing control of my body was a matter of accretion. I began eating to change my body. I was willful in this. Some boys had destroyed me, and I barely survived it. I knew I wouldn't be able to endure another such violation, and so I ate because I thought that if my body became repulsive, I could keep men away. Even at that young age, I understood that to be fat was to be undesirable to men, to be beneath their contempt, and I already knew too much about their contempt. This is what most girls are taught - that we should be slender and small. We should not take up space. We should be seen and not heard, and if we are seen, we should be pleasing to men, acceptable to society. And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear, but it's something that needs to be said, loudly, over and over again, so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us."

As with all great memoirs, Gay's vulnerability in Hunger makes it a phenomenal, empathy-inspiring read. She shares some of the most embarrassing, disturbing instances of discrimination she has faced as a fat person, ranging from both internet trolls and medical professionals berating her because of her weight, to how she could not find seating that would fit her in airplanes, movie theaters, etc. She elevates the intensity and quality of these disclosures by admitting the painful emotions that accompanied them: her sheer hunger for both the safety of invisibility and her right to visibility, the self-loathing society instilled within her because of her weight, and her desperate and sometimes self-destructive pleas for love. In large part because of her distinct voice, Gay somehow manages to make this memoir insightful, heartbreaking, uncomfortable, authentic, and sometimes even humorous all at once.

Overall, a difficult and worthwhile book I would recommend to everyone. I had the pleasure of getting dinner with Ms. Gay when she visited my college's campus in 2015, where she mentioned to me that she was working on this book. As a nineteen-year-old, I was intimidated and starstruck by her intelligence and wit. But ultimately, I was won over by how human she was: she was tired that day from an exhausting flight and it showed, and she still exuded kindness and good humor. I could hear her incisive and self-aware and oh so human voice in every single page of Hunger. I want to share one last quote from the book to close this review:

"In writing this memoir of my body, in telling you these truths about my body, I am sharing my truth and mine alone. I understand if the truth is not something you want to hear. The truth makes me uncomfortable too. But I am also saying, here is my heart, what's left of it. Here I am showing you the ferocity of my hunger. Here I am, finally freeing myself to be vulnerable and terribly human. Here I am, reveling in that freedom. Here. See what I hunger for and what my truth has allowed me to create."

Thank you, Roxane Gay, for empowering victims and survivors of eating disorders and various forms of assault - myself included - to honor our hunger and to use our stories to create. Thank you for showing, once again, how writing can unify and fortify and ultimately, help in the healing process. ...more

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Jan 11, 2016 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read2017, biography-memoir, reviewcopy, ebooks

The thing I always admire about Roxane Gay's writing, even when it makes me uncomfortable, is her ability to tackle issues head-on, with unflinching honesty. She may have hesitated, but you never see it on the page.

This very open memoir about hunger and size is powerful. This is Roxane Gay's experience, laid bare. I can't imagine what it took for her to get all of these thoughts on the page. There is a bit of repetition or overlap between the tiny chapters, but this is reflective of the daily li ...more

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Mar 09, 2018 Adam Dalva rated it it was amazing

I'm reviewing this for another venue, and there's a lot to say, but it is a memorable, often harrowing book that is more stylistically weird than I'd expected. It will stick with me.

UPDATE: Review posted here! https://www.guernicamag.com/i-wish-i-...

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Feb 05, 2019 Chelsea (chelseadolling reads) rated it it was amazing

This was a hard read. So important and so genuine, but SO hard to read. Fuck. I'm going to be thinking about this for years to come.

TW: rape, fatphobia

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Jun 25, 2017 Hannah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, non-fiction, loved-it

This is the memoir I will compare all other memoirs against. Roxane Gay has written one hell of a perfect book. If I hadn't been a fan before, I would for sure be one now. Not only is this an honest, unflinching look at herself and her life and her choices, it is also stylistically beautiful in a way most books (fiction or non-fiction) never achieve.

Roxane Gay tells, quite literally, the story of her body. She is completely and brutally honest in her approach and does not mince her words when de ...more

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Mar 21, 2018 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018, favorites

My full review, as well as my other thoughts on reading, can be found on my blog.

In understated but moving prose, Roxane Gay reflects upon her life as a fat woman living in a misogynistic society that seeks to regiment and shame “unruly” bodies. The six-part book consists of eighty-eight short essays that alternate between autobiography, cultural criticism, and social analysis. The start of the memoir centers on Gay’s weight gain following her gang rape at age twelve by her boyfriend and his fri ...more

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Jun 18, 2017 Wendy rated it it was ok

I am of two minds about this book.
Firstly, Roxanne Gay's suffering is unimaginable. Reading this was hard, hard to read someone's account of their living hell and building a body as a cage because life is so dangerous and cruel. And it is. She's right about that.
What Roxanne experienced, her brutal gang rape, traumatised her, brutalised her, and got her fixated on her BODY. I have deep compassion for her.
The book was also illuminating in its exploration of culture's cruelty, prejudice, and rhet ...more

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Apr 01, 2016 Erin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography-challenge-2017, june-2017, popsugar-2017-challenge, written-by-women

Roxane Gay is a National treasure.

Hunger by Roxane Gay is raw, gritty, honest, heartbreaking, powerful, and beautiful. I can't say enough amazing things about Roxane Gay and her important words. Hunger explores the lasting effects trauma has had on Roxane's life. At 12 years old she was brutally gang raped by a boy she had a crush on and his friends. She kept this awful secret for thirty years, blaming herself as so many survivors of rape do. She gained weight in order to shield herself and mak Roxane Gay is a National treasure.

Hunger by Roxane Gay is raw, gritty, honest, heartbreaking, powerful, and beautiful. I can't say enough amazing things about Roxane Gay and her important words. Hunger explores the lasting effects trauma has had on Roxane's life. At 12 years old she was brutally gang raped by a boy she had a crush on and his friends. She kept this awful secret for thirty years, blaming herself as so many survivors of rape do. She gained weight in order to shield herself and make herself unattractive to male desire.

I was so angry reading this book, I wanted to (& still do) hunt down the assholes who raped her. I was so angry at the people who treated her like she was subhuman just because she's overweight. The things this woman has had to deal with are unimaginable. I don't know how she gets out of bed everyday. I don't know that I could if I were her, but she's a much stronger woman than I am.

I don't know anybody who hasnt struggled with body image. Even the beautiful people sometimes feel fat and ugly. I think everyone should be able to relate to Roxane's struggle, even if you aren't morbidly obese like her. Roxane describes her body as being "unruly". I like that term, it perfectly describes how I feel about my body. I often feel like my body has a mind of its own and I beg it to please just do what I want it to. It rarely listens to me, because its unruly. I've been overweight for the vast majority of my life. I had my thin years( they were also my most unhappy years). For me food is love. My family shows it loves you through food. If you're sad, they feed you. If you're happy, they feed you. I'm a happy eater, I can't eat when I'm sad or unhappy. In the two weeks after my mother died I lost 10LBs. I could not ingest food at all. When I was my thinnest, my life was hell. I would go days without eating anything and when I did eat it was popcorn or cotton balls dipped in orange juice....but I looked great and everyone said so. The compliments just flowed. I felt like hell but looked like heaven. I had a socially acceptable look so people ignored my misery.

Hunger spoke to me and reminded me of that person I thankfully overcame. I recommend everyone read this book. Its important and necessary.

Popsugar 2017 Reading Challenge: Book By or About a Person who has a disability. ...more

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Aug 01, 2014 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography-memoir, favorites, edelweiss, diverse-lgbtq

Update: I had to share Roxane's interview on the Daily Show, because it's amazing.

Holy shit, Roxane Gay has written one hell of a memoir. This book is powerful on about forty-seven different levels and I really think that it ought to be required reading for anyone interested in feminism and the body-positive movement. But also, just anyone who wants to read good writing because holy shit, Roxane Gay: How do you write like this?! It's kind of unfair.

This book was originally announced as a 2016 Update: I had to share Roxane's interview on the Daily Show, because it's amazing.

Holy shit, Roxane Gay has written one hell of a memoir. This book is powerful on about forty-seven different levels and I really think that it ought to be required reading for anyone interested in feminism and the body-positive movement. But also, just anyone who wants to read good writing because holy shit, Roxane Gay: How do you write like this?! It's kind of unfair.

This book was originally announced as a 2016 summer release, but it got pushed back because she needed some more time to work on it. Within half an hour of starting this book, it's obvious why she needed that time. This is one of the most intensely personal things I've ever read and it's full of so much pain that was clearly never fully processed. Writing it must have been the most difficult thing in the world.

With that in mind, reading this was not easy. It was sometimes so brutal that I had to set it down, and yet it was so engrossing that I still managed to read it in just over 24 hours.

So here it is: Roxane Gay is a fat woman. At her heaviest, she weighed nearly 600 pounds. She’s smaller than that today, but she’s still a very large woman. She sometimes feels like that fact makes up her sole identity. Which is a shame because so many people love her intellect but also obvious because that's the world we live in and it can’t be an easy thing for her to navigate. I struggle with it, and I’m only 30 pounds(ish) heavier than I want to be. I feel like the fattest woman in the world some days, even though rationally I know I’m not. I don’t even need plus-size clothing, so I can’t imagine what it must be like when the numbers are exponentially larger.

Even though Gay spends a lot of time probing the psychological barriers that have contributed to her weight gain, this book isn’t about “making excuses.” When she was 12, Gay was gang-raped by a group of boys and she didn’t tell anyone about it...for 30 years. She didn’t know how to ask for the help she needed, so she just kept it all in. The self-blame, the depression, the bullying and slut-shaming she received. The next year, she left home for boarding school and she discovered comfort in the form of food. Without any adults really keeping an eye on her, she began to gain weight. Her feelings of trauma and her need for comfort were so intense that her weight gain was rather dramatic. Her family was startled by the change, but didn’t know the psychological roots and so their response really just made her feel worse. She began to conflate her size and her individual self-worth, which really only intensified her depression and led her to seek yet more comfort in food.

This is a powerful statement in favor of the body-positive movement, even if Gay doesn’t want it to be or doesn’t seem to think it needs to be. But here’s the thing: so many people are down on that movement because, “Well being fat isn’t healthy and accepting that someone is fat is bad for them. If we really wanted to help, we’d encourage them to lose that weight.” Gay skewers that point of view so well here, even if she doesn’t explicitly intend to. She knows she’s fat, she knows how she got there, and she harbors no illusions about it. She doesn’t want to be fat and she’s even taken some steps to lose some of the weight. But it’s hard to go to a gym and get exercise when you’re 400 pounds when the other people at the gym make you feel like shit because you’re 400 pounds. She doesn’t need fit people telling her that being fat is unhealthy and she should lose weight.

It’s hard to break habits that you’ve held for decades, especially when your self-image is so tightly wound up with the way your body looks: you feel bad because of the weight, so you comfort yourself with food and gain more weight, then you feel even worse. And so much of our culture winds those things together so tightly. This bond is magnified when, like Gay, your initial weight gain is largely tied to mental health issues with other causes. There’s a lot of psychological layers to dig through, and maybe if our culture allowed people (women) to separate their feelings of value from their weight, it might actually help with both the value and the weight.

Long story short: the “fat acceptance” movement, as it gets derisively called, isn’t about letting people be as fat and as unhealthy as they want. It’s about letting them feel good about themselves even though they are fat. Being fat shouldn't be the sole thing that makes up your identity.

This is a hard, hard book to read because Gay goes into a lot of traumatic issues, particularly sexual assault. Tread carefully if you’re sensitive to those kinds of things. But there’s so much to think about in this book. It shines a new light on her previous work, it’s an unapologetic look at mental health and obesity and trauma and rape culture, and it’s one woman’s beautifully written account of a difficult life story. It's one of the best memoirs I've ever read and I can't recommend it enough. ...more

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Feb 06, 2017 Sam rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017-reads, aty-challenge-2017, all-time-favorites

Roxane Gay, thank you.

Unflinching honesty, ugly and beautiful truth. Reading Roxane Gay's memoir Hunger is at once a difficult, intimate endeavor, but the sheer power of Gay's blunt, unsparingly honest prose made this a single sitting read for me, gobsmacked by her willingness to reveal the depths of her pain, her rage, her hope, her insecurities, her jealousy, and her hunger for so many things in this world, some attainable and some tantalizingly out of reach due to physical, cultural, societal Roxane Gay, thank you.

Unflinching honesty, ugly and beautiful truth. Reading Roxane Gay's memoir Hunger is at once a difficult, intimate endeavor, but the sheer power of Gay's blunt, unsparingly honest prose made this a single sitting read for me, gobsmacked by her willingness to reveal the depths of her pain, her rage, her hope, her insecurities, her jealousy, and her hunger for so many things in this world, some attainable and some tantalizingly out of reach due to physical, cultural, societal, or self imposed limitations. This is a memoir of Gay's body, but she does in his memoir what she asks, begs, demands, fears, hungers for: the reader must see her body, indeed through her eyes we for a moment can feel what it is to inhabit her body, but the reader is also confronted with the nuance and complexity and intelligence and whirlwind of thoughts and desires and emotions that Gay is just as much as her body, and that too often has been stripped away from her in terms of how modern American culture views a woman of size.

And as specific as it is, this immersal into the mind and heart and body of Gay, there is so much here that resonates and reverberates loudly, into the collective experience, the female experience, the black experience. There is so much at work here: rape, trauma, alienation, sexuality, familial relationships, the myriad sides and natures of America and how its people deny and demean (but also embrace and love). And perhaps I may have more in common with Gay than the average reader or even if I don't, perceive a closer kinship - biracial, 5' 10", boarding school kid, in my adult years always tending heavier than I'd (and my family) would like me to be and the requisite concern and veneration of thinness=happiness that comes with that. Gay's ability to probe into the parts of herself she keeps hidden or submerged and bring that multitude of passion and feeling to the surface is incredibly moving, and at least for me, I was able to revel in and admire her honesty while also being forced to consider my own (or lack of it), truths about my complicity in terms of being part of a culture that simultaneously erases fat people but also can't help but accost them and reduce them to sheer mass and BMI and numbers on a scale, truths about how I often elevate the needs and desires of others far above those of my own and deny myself the power and importance of my hunger. I'm not a usually a memoir reader, but the ones I love best achieve this fantastic union of individual and universal. On the side of the individual story, there is specificity and intimacy and honesty; on he side of the universal, there is application for a new way of evaluating the world around you, a new way of understanding, a new perspective to consider. Gay's Hunger did all of those things, but for me struck personally, I felt how she felt and also felt my own feelings, I watched her rage and grieve and fear and felt my own rage and grief and fear. And the power of her honesty in writing this book has at least given me some courage or strength to be honest in my review of her work, even if I cannot yet be as honest about myself.

I'm just a girl on Goodreads, and I'm nowhere near as willing to be publicly honest as Gay, but in reading Hunger I couldn't help but be bowled over, experiencing her story and her life, watching her contextualize her experience and evaluate where all of us stand in being complicit with the inequities and indignities of the society we're all part of, letting Gay's sharp, blunt truth penetrate parts of myself I don't surface and force or prompt self-examination. I think Hunger will appeal widely, hitting for fans of Gay's previous work and for those memoir type readers who are ok with an uncomfortable, challenging, honest experience getting into the skin and mind and heart of someone else. For me, this will be one of the most powerful and transformative and necessary reads of 2017. 5 stars, given with a lump in the throat and watery eyes and feeling both full and drained after reading and processing and reviewing.

-received an ARC on edelweiss thanks to Harper Collins

...more

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Aug 20, 2018 Lola rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoir, race, abuse, adult, culture, audiobook, feminism

I love the 21st century, because books such as this one are being published and their presence in this world make it a better place. The more we read about abuse, fat-shaming, race and womanhood, the more we understand, sympathize, and begin the process of making sure our friends and family members and children feel loved and protected and respected at all times. It takes guts - real guts - to let people not just into your world, but also your mind, with no way to predict how people will respond ...more

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Jul 21, 2017 Carol rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, published-2017, ebook, health, memoir, read-2017

"Something Terrible Happened"

Whew! Roxane Gay gives it up and lays it all out there baring body and soul to the world in HUNGER.

She writes about the unspeakable horror that broke her young body and mind at age 12 and reveals the struggles of a 400+ weight challenged woman in our society....the limitations....the stares....the shame....and the constant battle of trying to lose hundreds of pounds.

She also reveals facts about health issues, personal relationships and difficulty in purchasing clothe

...more

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Jul 25, 2017 Book Riot Community added it

Written in six parts and 88 chapters that read like vignettes, Hunger is not a conventional memoir. The book’s subtitle, “A Memoir of (My) Body,” conveys the real subject. After being gang-raped in a cabin in the woods when she was only twelve, Gay turned to food because her body “Needed to be a safe harbor rather than a small, weak vessel that betrayed me.” Gay shares her observations about being a woman of a size in a world that is not built for, or has any tolerance of, large bodies. Hunger g ...more

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Jan 21, 2017 Aya Hamza rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, memoirs-or-biography, audiobook, feminism

“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.”

*Listened to the audiobook, read by Roxane Gay herself.

TRIGGER WARNING: Rape and eating disorders.

2.5 stars.
I was hesitant to write this review, because everyone loved this book, and I thought I would.. but I didn't like it as much! Parts of this book made me an ...more

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Aug 15, 2017 Maggie rated it it was amazing

A nuanced cultural understanding of gender did not exist then - girls were pink and boys were blue and that was that.

Trigger Warning: The book and this review mention rape and obesity.

Hunger by Roxane Gay is powerful and heartbreaking, but it’s also honest but bold. It gives us a raw image of what Roxane went through. From her tomboyish looks growing up to her rape, to her obesity, to her struggles of life as she tried fixing this problem she made herself. Roxane is a literary character tha

A nuanced cultural understanding of gender did not exist then - girls were pink and boys were blue and that was that.

Trigger Warning: The book and this review mention rape and obesity.

Hunger by Roxane Gay is powerful and heartbreaking, but it’s also honest but bold. It gives us a raw image of what Roxane went through. From her tomboyish looks growing up to her rape, to her obesity, to her struggles of life as she tried fixing this problem she made herself. Roxane is a literary character that is real. Hunger is a memoir about her - a strong memoir about her body. Roxanne's life is explained in detail formed that gives shivers to the reader because of how gritty it can get and how graphic one can see it. Roxane was raped at the age of 12 by a boy she thought she loved and some of his gang friends. After that, Roxane felt like she lost everything. She kept everything a secret and didn’t tell anyone about anything, a secret that she thought she should keep invisible and non-existent. She was known as the slut at her school which caused her to move. Because of this trauma, Roxane became obsessed with eating. She thought eating was her comfort and thought eating was the only thing that wouldn’t judge her for becoming different. She then realized food was the reason for her becoming different. After years, Roxane came out of her shell and decided to let the whole world know about this by writing everything down.

I am not small. For one, I am tall. That is both a curse and a saving grace. I have presence, I am told. I take up space. I intimidate. I do not want to take up space. I want to go unnoticed. I want to hide. I want to disappear until I gain control of my body.

Roxane reflects a lot of women and men in society today by many ways. She didn’t write this to make people feel better about their weight, to make them less self-conscious, to educate them on weight loss and weight gain, to allow people to understand what it feels like to be raped and then become super obese, but she wrote this to let people know all the challenges she faced as she was going through this phase that she thought she could keep silent forever. Women in society are different nowadays compared to Gay herself. When a girl, whether she’s a teenager or a woman, is raped, assaulted, or harassed in any way, she finds ways to let people know and tell them, finds ways to find proof of this to have as evidence. Roxane thought it was best to keep silent for reasons for herself, but nowadays, women would tell the police, their friends, family, and even ask strangers for help. Not only is rape the case in this, but also being severely overweight. Although this is becoming more true, there are still people who decide to stay silvent for reason, whether they're personal or not, because, like Roxane, they think it's best for them as well.

And I remembered the result of being weighed and measured and judged, the unfathomable number: 577 pounds. I thought I had known shame in my life, but that night, I truly knew shame. I did not know if I would ever find my way past the shame a toward a place where I could face my body, accept my body, change my body.

In society today, we seem to reflect on something similar to Roxane’s words, except today, women are learning to no longer pay much attention to that. It’s become a trend to be thick or to be a little heavy or weight an amount they shouldn’t be, and it seems to me that Roxane was worried about that. There is a small extent where this literary character reflects women and men in society. That small part is how women are still afraid of showing their true colors to the people out in the world so they hide in ways they can think of even when they know it will affect them in the future in large ways. A lot of people can relate to Roxane in all of her cases. When a woman is raped, based on Roxane, it feels as if their body just stop reacting and they couldn’t do anything. Roxane felt like hiding herself by eating would disguise her in a way where men wouldn’t want her because of how fat she is, how overweight she looks, how her feminine looks are gone and how she can’t do anything because of everything she’s carrying in her body.

As she interrogated the doctors, her husband sat next to her, smirking. It became clear why she was there. It was all about him and how he saw her body.

This is an example that women still face in society today. Women want to look their best in looks and body and weight to impress men, even women who like women want to look their best to impress women or gay men want to look like the fit and attractive man to attract other men. This is something that is still a sensitive and sad topic to many people. People can find this abusive and see it in a way where men and women are harassed mentally because they are being stereotyped and forced to be someone or become something they don’t want to or are uncomfortable with. Roxane ate a lot because she felt like hiding was the best, but as she moves forward, she realized how hard it is to live her life now. We see that she regrets this and how she blames herself for making this choice, for becoming the person she is now, but others wouldn’t blame her if they understand her. Other women, whether they’ve been raped or not or even if they’ve decided to eat so much to get to the point where they don’t look like themselves anymore, don’t seem to care much about that. Women nowadays are changing their own perspective of their bodies. In Roxane’s words, she thought nothing was sadder than seeing this woman and the man sitting at the clinic she was at because the husband saw her as someone he did not like. And still, many people don’t think there is nothing sadder than seeing people trying to convince or forcing their partner, friends, or family members become someone they do not enjoy seeing. In other words, society doesn't think there is nothing sadder than people judging others for their looks. We’ve been taught to not judge people based on looks, but it seems to me that at that time, people would judge people by the way they looked, by how “fit” they were and how big or small their body was. This is still something that happens and is brought up a lot, but there are fewer people forcing others to become someone they’re not.

The 1997 film
Perfect Body
is another example of this. The main character starves herself in order to please her coach and to make the Olympics team. As her coach was taking down her weight, Andie said she is 5 feet tall exactly and her weight is an average and normal weight for a 5 foot tall girl. Her coach was telling her that she needs to lose 8 pounds because average isn't what he needs of her, he needs "perfection." Not only is Andie, the protagonist, hurting herself by starving herself, but is also hurting her team, whether she makes it or not, by becoming weak and fragile, with no strength because she isn't going to have enough strength. The example of that is shown when Andie faints twice after her performance and is taken to a hospital to get checked. They ask her what she's eaten and she says she ate. She ate a banana and drank water. Andie not only fainted and starved herself, but she pretended to eat to try and fool her mother and after "eating" and drinking water, she would start doing sit ups to keep her flat stomach. We see how unhealthy she becomes as her skin is stretching out because of how much fat she is missing, something similar to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome based on the scene where she is looking at herself in the mirror and looking at her arm and stomach.

If someone wants to make it to a team specifically and the only way to do that is by starving yourself or eating an amount of food that is not enough for anything, then trying to make the team is not worth it. Women are expected to have the "perfect body" and not be fat or overweight because they are women. Forcing yourself to starve to become skinny is not a diet, it is something unhealthy that is only a glass reflection that does not represent you but is instead killing you.

This is what most girls are taught - that we should be slender and small. We should not take up space. We should be seen and not heard, and if we are seen, we should be pleasing to men, acceptable to society. And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear, but it’s something that needs to be said, loudly, over and over again, so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us.

It’s a stereotype. Completely. And it was something Roxane did not agree on. She is a feminist, and Roxane believes that if no one else is going to take the lead of lifting their voice up high to tell people that women aren’t just supposed to be small and slender, then she will do it. She will tell people that women can be aggressive and masculine. She herself says that she considered herself a tomboy when she was young. She’d play with G.I. Joe figures instead of Barbie dolls and now is wearing oversized men’s shirts. Instead of being sensitive, emotional, verbal, a crier, sensitive, gentle, home oriented, and many other expected stereotypes, Roxane can be described as independent, active, worldly, tough but gentle, and not easily hurt with emotions overflowing her. She’s no longer afraid of her secret being told, not to mention that thousands of people know about it, but instead she’s proud of herself for speaking about it and for letting people know why she’s the way she is, what her story is and what happened to her and why she became the way she is. “When you can't find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example.”, and that was exactly what she did.

Sexy is not a size, every calorie is not a war, your body is not a battleground. Your value is not measured in pounds.

I in no way can say I can relate to Roxane. I am not calling her fat in any way, but I am a very insecure teen who is chubby but calls herself fat and has also looked at food as an answer to hiding herself and her shame, only to regret everything. I can see where Gay is coming from there. In ways, I think food is the answer at times and is all I've looked at as an answer, but then sometimes I force myself to not eat because I tell myself I will lose some weight. I will get skinnier. Boys will like me if I'm skinny. I'll be loved more if I'm skinny. I'll be praised for being underweight instead of overweight. but then I think about it and say It doesn't matter what they think, it should be what I think and what I see and what I see is someone I don't love, but someone I want to love. Instead of becoming obsessed with food, I rejected food. I didn't want to eat. I wanted to eat parts of it only slowly and drink lots of water or some kind of liquid to get full. Like Roxane, I regret it.

Roxane to me is beautiful. She's different than many other women in different ways. She considers herself a bad feminist and is a woman who is not the typical weight a woman normally is. But even with that, I find Roxane Gay to be inspiring and uplifting. The way she's talked about herself and her story is uplifting and even though she doesn't mean this memoir to be inspiring or have people think differently about her or other "fat women", it does inspire me, it does make me look at it differently, and it makes me think differently about myself. Roxane is strong. She's decided to use her female voice to bring women together to allow them to know that not only are stereotypes wrong, abusive, and rude in harmful ways but also to express herself to let other women know they are free to please themselves in ways they want to; to be who they want to be and not someone others want to me, and that is something I learned from this memoir; I should look at myself as someone I want to be, not someone others want me to be, or to look at myself as someone who needs to please someone because the only person I should be pleasing is myself, and that's what Roxane has learned to do.

She's beautiful. She's strong. She's taken the lead as a female. And now it's up to other females to take more leads and follow. ...more

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Jan 09, 2016 Diane rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoirs

This book gutted me. It is raw and emotional, and Roxane is so honest about her suffering that I wish I could give her a hug. Except she says she doesn't like hugs, so instead I'll try to virtually comfort her with this book review.

Hunger is called a memoir of her body, and Roxane describes what it's like to move through the world as a obese person. She also explains why she became so big, and it's linked to a brutal assault she experienced when she was 12. You see, Roxane was gang-raped by boy ...more

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Jul 06, 2017 Vanessa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Part self loathing part empowering account of a woman dealing and living with her life long weight demons.

She recounts so many of the indignities that befall her as a larger person in today's society.

It's both incredibly uncomfortable and comforting to hear someone else describe trauma and pain so acutely. It makes your own pain and troubles feel not so isolating. I found some of the stories here so brutally honest and feel so ashamed at humanity. The cruelty, the indignity she suffered due to ...more

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Jun 17, 2018 Sh3lly (grumpybookgrrrl.com) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: gurrrl-power, library, nonfiction, read-2018, favorites

People don’t expect the writer who will be speaking at their event to look like me. They don’t know how to hide their shock when they realize that a reasonably successful writer is this overweight. These reactions hurt, for so many reasons. They illustrate how little people think of fat people, how they assume we are neither smart nor capable if we have such unruly bodies.

I am what Roxane Gay would call “Lane Bryant” overweight. My body is still scrutinized and judged, and I still face many of t ...more

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Jul 01, 2018 Lucy Langford rated it it was amazing

5*****

I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.

Extremely powerful, raw and honest. Roxane Gay presents herself fully to the reader, she lets us inside her life, in an unapologetic and truthful way. This is an intimate account of Roxane Gay's experience with her body, something which she describes as 'wildly undisciplined'. She is insightful and critical of the events that had taken place over her childhood, teenage years and twenties.

Roxane Gay presents her vuln 5*****

I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.

Extremely powerful, raw and honest. Roxane Gay presents herself fully to the reader, she lets us inside her life, in an unapologetic and truthful way. This is an intimate account of Roxane Gay's experience with her body, something which she describes as 'wildly undisciplined'. She is insightful and critical of the events that had taken place over her childhood, teenage years and twenties.

Roxane Gay presents her vulnerability and is brave at her admission of sexual assault which occurred at such a young age.
There is the before and the after. Before I gained weight. After I gained weight. Before I was raped. After I was raped.

She delves into how this trauma influenced her to hunger for foods My body is a cage. My body is a cage of my own making. I am still trying to make my way out of it., she is critical of why she gained weight, how the trauma and weight effected her relationships with both sexes, how her weight influences the making of friendships. She describes the searing loneliness she faces during those years, the pain and brokenness, the numb feeling and finding comfort in food.

Roxane Gay also highlights the way society treats fat people in such unfair ways. People are quick to judge and not to understand. The media and shops project that being fat cannot be synonymous with being happy. People project assumed narratives onto your body and are not at all interested in the truth of your body, whatever that truth might be.

And sadly she states the hurtful truth that some people still see No matter what I accomplish, I will be fat, first and foremost.

This book puts you into the mind and body of someone who has to move in a different way, who has to question and plan out where they are going, someone who doesn't want to gain attention to the public eye but gains it anyway, someone who has faced and lived through sexual assault and the consequences of this. Roxane Gay makes you question how fatness is judged, and the larger question of whether others should be judged at all.

What I liked about Roxane Gay is that she didn't just describe her hunger for food, she describes her hunger for loving relationships, a world of understanding and most inspiring, her hunger and ambition to become a writer.

Overall, this memoir is probably one of my favourites and any memoirs I read after will be compared to this. I know, from interviews, that weight is something that Roxane Gay did not want to initially write about, however, the realisation of the avoidance of this topic influenced her to write it. This memoir was completely beautiful and emotive, and has much to teach us about bravery, kindness and compassion to others. ...more

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Jun 15, 2017 Maria rated it liked it

This book was fine. Interesting. Readable. At times poignant. But I am disappointed because I thought I was going to read something spectacular and brilliant - something that would make me look at the world and the people around me differently. I think I got this idea from the episode of This American Life that featured some of the material that later went into this book. I found that episode fascinating, but unfortunately, I didn't find that this book went much deeper than the radio show did.
A ...more

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Jul 29, 2014 Didi rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Didi by: Memoir

According to my electronic dictionary, hunger means a feeling of discomfort or weakness caused by lack of food, coupled with the desire to eat or a strong desire or craving. I must say that Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger A Memoir of (My) Body was named appropriately. https://browngirlreading.com/2017/08/...

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Jun 21, 2017 Ammar rated it really liked it

Shelves: female-authors, read-in-2017

raw
to the bone
sincere
frustrating
shocking
and full of pain

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Sep 21, 2018 میعاد rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author) · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite, کتابهایی-که-ترجمه-کردم

وقتى دوازدهساله بودم، تعدادى پسر که اهداف خطرناک مردها را در سر میپروراندند به من تجاوز کردند؛ اتفاق وحشتناكى بود، منجر به دگرگونشدن زندگیام شد. پیش از آن، خام بودم، آفتابمهتابندیده بودم. باور داشتم که آدمها ذاتاً خوب هستند و لزوماً فروتنی را به ارث مىبرند. باایمان بودم و به خدا اعتقاد داشتم. و بعد دیگر نداشتم. شکسته بودم. دگرگون شده بودم. هرگز متوجه نخواهم شد که اگر تبدیل به دختر درون جنگل نمیشدم چه کسی میشدم. آن پسرها دختری را که بودم کُشتند، ولی تمام وجودم را نكشتند. آنها تفنگی را روی شقیقهام وقتى دوازده‌ساله بودم، تعدادى پسر که اهداف خطرناک مردها را در سر می‌پروراندند به من تجاوز کردند؛ اتفاق‌ وحشتناكى بود، منجر به دگرگون‌شدن زندگی‌ام شد. پیش از آن، خام بودم، آفتاب‌مهتاب‌ندیده بودم. باور داشتم که آد‌م‌ها ذاتاً خوب هستند و لزوماً فروتنی را به ارث مى‌برند. باایمان بودم و به خدا اعتقاد داشتم. و بعد دیگر نداشتم. شکسته بودم. دگرگون شده بودم. هرگز متوجه نخواهم شد که اگر تبدیل به دختر درون جنگل نمی‌شدم چه کسی می‌شدم. آن پسرها دختری را که بودم کُشتند، ولی تمام وجودم را نكشتند. آن‌ها تفنگی را روی شقیقه‌ام یا چاقویی را روی گلویم نگذاشتند و تهدیدم نکردند. من نجات یافتم. به خودم یاد دادم که شکرگزار نجات‌یافتنم باشم حتی اگر خیلی شبیه به نجات‌یافتن نبود. من از درون خالى شده بودم. مصمم بودم تا خلأ را پُر كنم، و غذا چيزى بود كه با آن پيرامون بخشِ كوچكى كه از من باقى مانده بود يك سپر ساختم. خوردم و خوردم و خوردم به اميد اينكه اگر خودم را گُنده كنم، بدنم در امان خواهد بود. من دخترى را كه روزگارى بودم به خاك سپردم چون غرق در مشكلات مختلف بود. كوشيدم تا تمام خاطراتش را پاك كنم، ولى او هنوز آن‌جاست، در یک جایی.... هنوز کوچک و وحشت‌زده و خجالت‌زده است، و شاید دارم می‌نویسم که پيش او بازگردم، می‌کوشم تا هر چه را که لازم بوده بشنود به او بگویم.
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کتاب رو می‌تونین از نشر کوله‌پشتی تهیه‌ش کنین📚 ...more

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Reading Women: 12) A Lambda Literary Award winner	26	544	Jan 23, 2019 04:09PM
Privilege Much?	3	98	Jan 10, 2019 07:12AM
Mental Health Boo...: Nonfiction November- Hunger by Roxane Gay	2	20	Nov 01, 2018 12:26AM
Our Shared Shelf: Sep/Oct 2017 - Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxanne Gay	15	759	Oct 16, 2018 07:52AM
Goodreads Choice ...: Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body - October 2018	3	42	Oct 09, 2018 09:14PM
Around the Year i...: Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, by Roxane Gay	4	52	Oct 08, 2018 02:51PM
SCPL Online NonFi...: Final Thoughts	2	6	Oct 03, 2018 05:38PM

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