And on nearly every page, Gay’s raw, powerful prose plants a flag, facing down decades of shame and self-loathing by reclaiming the body she never should have had to lose. The book’s short, sharp chapters come alive in vivid personal anecdotes. The result is a generous and empathic consideration of what it’s like to be someone else: in itself something of a miracle. In 88 short, lucid chapters, Gay powerfully takes readers through realities that pain her, vex her, guide her, and inform her work. It’s hard to imagine this electrifying book being more personal, candid, or confessional. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)ĭisplays bravery, resilience, and naked honesty from the first to last page. An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath. Publishers Weekly (starred review)Ī heart-rending debut memoir from the outspoken feminist and essayist. Gay denies that hers is a story of “triumph,” but readers will be hard pressed to find a better word.
This raw and graceful memoir digs deeply into what it means to be comfortable in one’s body. Gay turns to memoir in this powerful reflection on her childhood traumas…Timely and resonant, you can be sure that Hunger will touch a nerve, as so much of Roxane Gay’s writing does. a memoir that’s so brave, so raw, it feels as if ’s entrusting you with her soul Seattle Times At its most symphonic, it’s an intellectually rigorous and deeply moving exploration of the ways in which trauma, stories, desire, language and metaphor shape our experiences and construct our reality. Ann Patchett, Commonwealth and Bel CantoĪt its simplest, it’s a memoir about being fat - Gay’s preferred term - in a hostile, fat-phobic world. HUNGER is an amazing achievement in more ways than I can count.
Roxane Gay shows us how to be decent to ourselves, and decent to one another. Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and tells a story that hasn't yet been told but needs to be.It turns out that when a wrenching past is confronted with wisdom and bravery, the outcome can be compassion and enlightenment-both for the reader who has lived through this kind of unimaginable pain and for the reader who knows nothing of it. With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and authority that have made her one of the most admired voices of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen.
In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined," Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.' I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. 'I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe.