To that cluster she added cherry tomatoes, basil, scallions, olive oil: a bowl full of summer.Īt the time, Gay was writing her new book, “Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.” The “zoodles,” their creation and consumption, were part of her determined effort at self-care. It was a swirling green and white nest of health, curled by the blades of her trendy new kitchen tool. I also hope Roxane, and more strong women like her, can continue to change our world for the better.A couple of years ago, during the height of the Spiralizer gadget craze, Roxane Gay posted a picture on Tumblr of a cyclone of zucchini strips she’d just rendered. I hope by sharing her deepest secret and the painful ways in which people treat her, Roxane can continue to find comfort and peace within her own body. The beauty and simplicity in the way it was written, the pure vulnerability that wept out of each page, and the ability of one woman to take so much pain and continue moving forward has allowed me to look deeper into the way I treat myself and others. This book, as quickly as I read it, will stay with me for a long time. Why do we feel it is our right to admonish, condescend, and harm fat people? Fat women are degraded, ignored, and misgendered frequently because their bodies do not coincide with the general view of femininity. Oftentimes, fat people are basically invisible.Īnd why are we so angry at, what Roxane calls, “unruly bodies,” - bodies that don’t fit our social standards for what is okay. Can the two not co-exist? And that is when she is being given attention. “”You’re not fat…you have such a pretty face,” as if I cannot be fat and also possess what they see as valuable qualities,” she writes. Even the word “fat” is given a negative connotation. In a country that is getting bigger, we are disproportionately angry towards fat people. Can she fit in the chair at a restaurant, or worse, on stage at a speaking engagement? Will she be humiliated on a plane when a flight attendant makes a show of giving her a seatbelt extender? How many people will look through her, make fun of her, give unsolicited advice, or laugh at her in a given day? She eloquently speaks of the many things she worries about, given her size. And personally, she must come to terms with living inside of a body that cannot do the things she wants to do and feel the way she wants to feel. Her family, under the guise of concern, constantly demands a solution to her weight. Society actively relishes their distaste for fat people. She continues to gain weight and then she must peel back the many layers of perceptions around fatness. Unfortunately, these walls physically manifest as weight. She is building walls around her to protect herself. She calls it the “before” and “after.” After the rape, Roxane eats uncontrollably - or really, she is in full control, she knows exactly what she is doing. In fact, while she doesn’t write around the story, it is just the impetus for where her relationship with her body jumps off.
Roxane’s memoir is not only about the trauma she experienced as a child. A woman with such a brilliant mind and so many talents had been irrevocably changed. Reading her words as she came to terms with these feelings, possibly fully in light for the first time, was painful. Her memoir is full of difficult stories and moments where she felt out of control. She felt that she did not deserve actual affection, that lovers were just tolerating and then hurting her, because that was all she could ask for given her size and damage. Roxane continued to allow herself to be taken advantage of and treated without respect. As she ballooned in size, she shrunk in the ability to care for and about herself. But, at least this means it is impenetrable against future harm.īut, that’s not really the case. Stuck in a prison of her own mind, she begins to see her body as a prison as well. After being gang-raped at twelve years old, Roxane eats as a coping mechanism. This book was, of course, incredibly difficult for her to write as it puts her body,mind, and experiences on full display. It feels like Roxane is talking directly to you, but really, she is talking to herself. Truly one of the most viscerally vulnerable books written by a self-proclaimed “fortress,” Hunger speaks volumes about trauma, personhood, perseverance, and love. In about four hours, I read Hunger by Roxane Gay cover to cover. This is a review of Hunger by Roxane Gay, so it has some summary of the memoir