Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

Gay shares the experiences that have literally shaped her in this brave, heartbreaking memoir. A traumatic experience as an adolescent led to her developing coping mechanisms that involved using food for comfort and weight as a shield. Now, she faces the realities of existing in a world that is not set up to accommodate bodies of size.

While I don't share Gay's experience of trauma, I have (unfortunately) shared some of the experiences she relates about being a larger person in a world not suited for big figures. I applaud the bravery and raw honesty she shows in putting these words to paper. Gay starts out by telling her story chronologically, but then it feels like she moves over to handling things more topically, which leads to some show more jumping around in the timeline. Some later parts of the book also feel more like essays, leading me to wonder if they started out that way (the CIP data indicates that parts of the book appeared elsewhere prior to publication). I'm glad that I read this book. There's no lesson to be learned here -- Gay is on a journey, same as the rest of us; she hasn't figured out the magical secret to weight loss that we all would love to discover. show less

A memoir about trauma and fatness which was painful to read both in the ways that it intersected with my experiences and those that it didn't. I find it interesting how many reviews describe the book as repetitive and thus bad, whereas I understood the circling back as a means of showing the compounding nature of trauma. A lot of readers seem to want Roxane Gay to have finished in some upward trajectory of a "weight-loss journey"—for her to perform some complicated feat of gymnastics that would let her bootstrap her way out of her own body—but as she says in Hunger's opening pages, this "is not a story of triumph". It's neither a How To nor a How Not To book. It's far more mixed than that, as indeed are some of my feelings about show more Hunger—but what is more fitting for a book about hunger than for me to have mixed feelings about it? show less

Roxane Gay's book about what it's like to live in the world as an obese woman approaches the experience from both universal and starkly personal angles. She's so honest and unflinching in her examination of her own weight, as well as why she is fat, that the book is often difficult to read; I felt that I really shouldn't be privy to such personal information. But Gay is unable to not be completely open, and it's that rawness that makes this book so powerful.

Gay ties her very personal experience to the wider one of how society treats larger women, pulling from her own life to demonstrate how ill-equipped and judgmental we are of people who we perceive as lacking control, and especially of women who take up more space than they should. show more Gay is also a tall woman, at 6'3" making her even more conspicuous than she would be at an average height, making ordinary things difficult, from airline seats to finding clothes.

While she was on a book tour for this book, she traveled to Australia and did an interview with a website which subsequently wrote an article about the unique problems accommodating Gay's size posed for them, from having to find a sturdy chair to the onerous task of checking how many pounds the elevator could carry. It was amazing how very much a publication which intended to be sympathetic missed the mark and the whole sordid tale proved Gay's points. It should be noted that had this company planned an interview with a man of similar size, they would have gone about their preparations with a great deal less hysteria and certainly never considered it fodder for an article. show less

This was one of the most emotionally challenging listening experiences I’ve had. Not because the writing lacked anything. It was too powerful, too raw. I paused it often, unsure if I could keep going. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it was too much. Roxane Gay’s voice is steady and filled with nuance. There’s a richness to the way she shares her story that made it feel like I was hearing her read pages of a diary I wasn’t entirely sure I had the right to read. I hated how much of this I related to. I hated that it had to be written. I’m grateful that it was. This isn’t a book I can recommend to everyone. It’s too personal, too heavy, but it might be for you.

Suffering a despicable, traumatic experience at a young age, the author ate, a lot, to protect her body from future harm. But as a result, she became super obese (I like her personally acceptable description: a person of size). I gained a lot of weight last year (but significantly less than her) for health reasons, so I have a small taste of the shame she feels because of her size. But the bigger connection to this book for me is what I believe is likely universal, or almost universal, lifelong shame about something about something: something we did or said, or happened to us, something that eats at us and we hope to hide forever.

Gay’s extraordinary revelations about herself resonated deeply with me. That being said, she also opened show more my eyes to the struggles of the obese in this world. First, her gaining weight was a result of a child dealing the only way she knew how with the cruelty she endured, a cruelty against which she wages a daily battle. Second, she must plan her days to a level of infinite detail. We’ve all heard about the difficulty flying when overweight; but it’s true for seating at movie theaters, concert halls, and even restaurants! Third, enduring a world where just trying to sit in a chair can be torture leaving bruises and pain. Fourth, little to no clothes available for the super obese. And finally and most importantly, dealing with people who despise her for her weight (not to mention her race), who treat her as imaginary, whose faces fill with disgust upon seeing her—and conversely, those offering advice to her that she certainly doesn’t need from strangers much less family (as she points out, she’s extremely well-educated, she knows the problem and she’s tried everything to lose the weight). Or offering platitudes (“your face is pretty!).

Suffice it to say, this is a deeply personal book by Gay but that can resonate with every one of us on some level. If we all could be so brave as she is. show less

Roxane Gay is brilliant, readable and important in the struggles for women and blacks and I whipped through her book, yet I grew weary and dejected just as she did telling her tragic story. Her writing does spur one on even if there is a swathe of hopelessness about her recovering from the gang rape suffered at twelve. Yet I kept reading, fascinated by the depth of her confessions and laying bare of her pain and loneliness, and her self-understanding. It's what we're encouraged to do in memoir but how difficult it 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."

Does it make sense to follow the review of a recipe book with a memoir about body image and being overweight? Maybe it does, or maybe it doesn't, but I can promise it was a sheer coincidence that my reading choices overlapped in this way.

In Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, author Roxane Gay reflects on the struggles she has with her weight, stemming from a vicious sexual assault at a young age. The author shares intimate details about her mental and physical health, fat phobia and the daily hassles and humiliations she endures due to her size.

"This is no way to live, but this is how I live." End of Chapter 59

As a reader in Australia who struggles with their weight, I was hoping to gain some insight or new angle on weight gain and body show more image from a bestselling author, professor and social commentator. However, Roxane Gay's experiences as a tall (1.91m), bisexual American woman of Haitian descent are nothing at all like mine. I realised half way through that I had entered into this memoir with a fixed agenda instead of the intention to learn about another person's battles and demons.

"The bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes." Chapter 62

Roxane Gay is raw and unapologetic in an endearing way and bares her soul in this memoir. Her struggles with confidence and self worth were well written yet hard to read and as a society, there is much we should be ashamed about. After finishing Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, it's clear we have a long way to go in learning how to treat one another. show less