This is the book that everyone was talking about on my Twitter feed a few months ago. Written by Roxane Gay, the acclaimed social critic and author of Bad Feminist, it is a excruciatingly honest personal memoir that looks at sex, gender, violence, body-image and healing. Subtitled “A Memoir of (My) Body,” Hunger relates Gay’s struggles with her body, how society views her body, and her need to find a way to heal and love her “unruly body and unruly appetites.” Superficially the problem with her body is its size; at her heaviest Gay weighed 577 pounds at six feet, three inches. But don’t expect a predictable narrative of weight-loss and triumph, instead she offers a sophisticated critique of how women’s bodies are defined in our society, how they are weighed and judged and valued, and how they are ignored and mocked. She says about writing this memoir, “I’ve been forced to look at my guiltiest secrets. I’ve cut myself wide open. I am exposed. That is not comfortable. That is not easy.” It is also not comfortable or easy for the reader. We are not accustomed to confronting such raw, unfiltered intimacy. And for me, as a woman who has been fat, and thin, and then fat again, I am shocked to see so many of my own guiltiest secrets articulated, shared and rendered slightly less powerful or shameful.
At the heart of Gay’s story is a terrifying incident that happened when she was twelve years old. She was lured to an isolated cabin by a boy she liked and was raped by him and several of his friends. Be warned, her telling of this incident is graphic and horrifying. Her life can be clearly bisected into the before and after of that traumatic assault, and it was after this event she started to gain weight. Throughout the memoir she circles back to what happened, her response to it, and how it altered her relationship with the world and her own body.
Much of the memoir relates the day to day humiliations of living “in a world where the open hatred of fat people is vigorously tolerated and encouraged.” The humiliations come from the cruel and vindictive people who attack her regularly on social media; from those who at least try to appear to be well-meaning (“People are quick to offer you statistics and information about the dangers of obesity, as if you are not only fat but also incredibly stupid…”); but some of the worst humiliations come from simply living in a world not designed to accommodate your body. She has a whole chapter on the dangers of chairs: the ones that may collapse under her weight, the ones with narrow unforgiving armrests that bruise her, and the ones she can never expect to fit into.
There is definitely a therapeutic element to her memoir, she herself says “Writing this book is a confession.” But overall, it feels more like an exorcism; a violent attempt to expose and banish the demons that have been tormenting her since that day in the woods when she was twelve years old. And there is also a tone of vindication, an insistence that her body deserves love and compassion, and that eventually we cannot continue “to delude ourselves that our bodies [are] our biggest problem.”
I am hesitant to recommend this book, because it is so raw. Yet, Hunger is also a source of liberation for women who must constantly overcome their own "unruly body and unruly appetites.” And let’s face it, isn’t that all of us. For what is a woman’s body if not, by definition, unruly, and in constant need of sculpting, reducing, enlarging, plucking, shaving, being made up, to become in the end both hidden away and publicly displayed. And a woman’s unruly appetites are even worse, driving humankind into a vortex of anxiety, fear and sin since the Garden of Eden. But if you dare, read Hunger, and experience a whole new way to look at the world from inside another body.
Four smileys out of five: 😀😀😀😀
At the heart of Gay’s story is a terrifying incident that happened when she was twelve years old. She was lured to an isolated cabin by a boy she liked and was raped by him and several of his friends. Be warned, her telling of this incident is graphic and horrifying. Her life can be clearly bisected into the before and after of that traumatic assault, and it was after this event she started to gain weight. Throughout the memoir she circles back to what happened, her response to it, and how it altered her relationship with the world and her own body.
Much of the memoir relates the day to day humiliations of living “in a world where the open hatred of fat people is vigorously tolerated and encouraged.” The humiliations come from the cruel and vindictive people who attack her regularly on social media; from those who at least try to appear to be well-meaning (“People are quick to offer you statistics and information about the dangers of obesity, as if you are not only fat but also incredibly stupid…”); but some of the worst humiliations come from simply living in a world not designed to accommodate your body. She has a whole chapter on the dangers of chairs: the ones that may collapse under her weight, the ones with narrow unforgiving armrests that bruise her, and the ones she can never expect to fit into.
There is definitely a therapeutic element to her memoir, she herself says “Writing this book is a confession.” But overall, it feels more like an exorcism; a violent attempt to expose and banish the demons that have been tormenting her since that day in the woods when she was twelve years old. And there is also a tone of vindication, an insistence that her body deserves love and compassion, and that eventually we cannot continue “to delude ourselves that our bodies [are] our biggest problem.”
I am hesitant to recommend this book, because it is so raw. Yet, Hunger is also a source of liberation for women who must constantly overcome their own "unruly body and unruly appetites.” And let’s face it, isn’t that all of us. For what is a woman’s body if not, by definition, unruly, and in constant need of sculpting, reducing, enlarging, plucking, shaving, being made up, to become in the end both hidden away and publicly displayed. And a woman’s unruly appetites are even worse, driving humankind into a vortex of anxiety, fear and sin since the Garden of Eden. But if you dare, read Hunger, and experience a whole new way to look at the world from inside another body.
Four smileys out of five: 😀😀😀😀
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