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

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Roxane Gay

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body Kindle Edition

by Roxane Gay (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.

“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.”

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. 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. In Hunger, she explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

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Publication date

June 13, 2017
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of June 2017: If you’re a woman in America, chances are, no matter your size, you probably have a somewhat fetishistic relationship with food. We obsess over having too much, too little (to a lesser degree); we use terms like stealing a bite and guilty pleasure--things that evoke shame, and are meant to keep our bodies in line. For those that fit that (ever narrowing) bill, congratulations! Clothes are designed to fit you, kale growers love you, and so does society. You bask in its glow. The rest risk being in shadow, which is exactly where Roxane Gay wanted to be. In her brutally honest and brave memoir Hunger, Gay recounts a childhood sexual assault that led her to purposely gain weight in order to be unseen and therefore “safe.” Gay warns at the beginning of the book that if you’re looking for a triumphant weight loss memoir, this is not it. But Hunger is a triumph nonetheless. It’s a story not easily told, but the telling set her free. And through Gay’s experience we learn one of lessons she eventually did, that “all of us have to be more considerate of the realities of the bodies of others,” and more accepting of our own. --Erin Kodicek, The Amazon Book Review --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I had been because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one I made but barely recognized or understood but of my own making. I was miserable, but I was safe.”

In this intimate and searing memoir, the New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay addresses the experience of living in a body that she calls “wildly undisciplined.” She casts an insightful and critical eye over her childhood, teens, and twenties—including the devastating act of violence that was a turning point in her young life—and brings readers intwo the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.

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. Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and it tells a story that hasn’t yet been told but needs to be.

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Review

“A gripping book, with vivid details that linger long after its pages stop. . . . Hunger is arresting and candid. At its best, it affords women, in particular, something so many other accounts deny them—the right to take up space they are entitled to, and to define what that means.” -- Atlantic

“A work of staggering honesty . . . . Poignantly told.” -- New Republic

“The book’s short, sharp chapters come alive in vivid personal anecdotes. . . . 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.” -- Entertainment Weekly

“Bracingly vivid. . . . Remarkable. . . . Undestroyed, unruly, unfettered, Ms. Gay, live your life. We are all better for having you do so in the same ferociously honest fashion that you have written this book.” -- Los Angeles Times

“Searing, smart, readable. . . . “Hunger,” like Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” interrogates the fortunes of black bodies in public spaces. . . . Nothing seems gratuitous; a lot seems brave. There is an incantatory element of repetition to “Hunger”: The very short chapters scallop over the reader like waves.” -- Newsday

“Luminous. . . . intellectually rigorous and deeply moving.” -- The New York Times Book Review

“Her spare prose, written with a raw grace, heightens the emotional resonance of her story, making each observation sharper, each revelation more riveting. . . . It is a thing of raw beauty.” -- USA Today

“Powerful. . . . fierce. . . . Gay has a vivid, telegraphic writing style, which serves her well. Repetitive and recursive, it propels the reader forward with unstoppable force.” -- Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

“This is the book to read this summer . . . she’s such a compelling mind . . . . Anyone who has a body should read this book.” -- Isaac Fitzgerald on the Today show

“Unforgettable. . . . Breathtaking. . . . We all need to hear what Gay has to say in these pages. . . . Gay says hers is not a success story because it’s not the weight-loss story our culture demands, but her breaking of her own silence, her movement from shame and self-loathing toward honoring and forgiving and caring for herself, is in itself a profound victory.” -- San Francisco Chronicle --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Roxane Gay is the author of the essay collection Bad Feminist, which was a New York Times bestseller; the novel An Untamed State, a finalist for the Dayton Peace Prize; the memoir Hunger, which was a New York Times bestseller and received a National Book Critics Circle citation; and the short story collections Difficult Women and Ayiti. A contributing opinion writer to the New York Times, she has also written for Time, McSweeney’s, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Rumpus, Bookforum, and Salon. Her fiction has also been selected for The Best American Short Stories 2012, The Best American Mystery Stories 2014, and other anthologies. She is the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She lives in Lafayette, Indiana, and sometimes Los Angeles.

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

"I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I had been because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one I made but barely recognized or understood but of my own making. I was miserable, but I was safe."

In this intimate and searing memoir, the New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay addresses the experience of living in a body that she calls "wildly undisciplined." She casts an insightful and critical eye over her childhood, teens, and twenties--including the devastating act of violence that was a turning point in her young life--and brings readers intwo the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.

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. Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and it tells a story that hasn't yet been told but needs to be.

--Entertainment Weekly --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B013PKAFOC
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper; Reprint edition (June 13, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 13, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1528 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 270 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #120,778 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #161 in Dysfunctional Relationships
- #346 in Biographies & Memoirs of Women
- #579 in Black & African American Biographies

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Roxane Gay

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Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Harper’s Bazaar, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and New York Times bestselling Hunger: A Memoir of My Body. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel.

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1 star		3%

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"MY NO DID NOT MATTER"-p. 51

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 24, 2022

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Roxane Gay was raped when she was 12.

In reading Roxane's autobiography, I was reminded of another woman's rape words about how she disassociated and felt herself floating above, watching her own rape from the ceiling and these are her words: "I will spend the rest of my life trying to reattach the parts of me that watched from the ceiling that day".

"Coming back" from rape is a journey, and it is usually punctuated with a lot of self-destruction, and Roxane's story has a lot of that. She often runs towards self-destruction because maybe on the other side of that, there is some kind of familiarity, some kind of safety, some version, perhaps twisted, of love. She writes of "needing to be a victim of some kind over and over. That was something familiar, something I understood" (p.236 of my paperback copy).

After sexual assault, it seems less harmful for a girl to inflict damage upon herself rather than having others do it. Sexually abused women will almost always have issues revolving around control because they often feel some of their control was relinquished, stolen, or lost in the abuse. And since sexual abuse involves her body in such a direct way, it is natural that control will be often directed there, at her own body.

In Roxane's novel, An Untamed State, the main character is gang-raped, just like Roxane. Instead of binge-eating, however, she does NOT eat, saying she wants to feel "empty", because if there is nothing there, if she is nothing, then, naturally, there's NOTHING LEFT TO HURT.

Both these approaches--overeating and undereating--are flip sides of the same control coin. And it is a message to her potential perpetrators, and it is this: "I've ruined myself before giving anyone else the chance to EVER AGAIN".

Before he organized his gang rape of Roxane, "Christopher" was someone Roxane wanted love from. She writes on p. 49: "Christopher wanted to use me. I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to fill the loneliness, to ease the ache of being awkward". This is the TRAP girls fall into, desperately wanting love or validation from an incapable boy, and they are often PUSHED into this trap. They are pushed by the media, by fairy tales, and they are often unaware that these guys are playing games.

After the rape, Roxane writes that she became "hyperconscious of how I take up space" (p. 172). This can be a result of sexual assault, regardless of body size. Many sexually assaulted women become hyper-vigilant and PTSD-ing in public because they know how quickly aggression can happen.

Unexamined, sexual assault creates a low bar for future relationships. When Roxane gets older, she often does not wait to get to know someone before jumping into a relationship, which often happens when sexually abused young women start having relationships. She writes of a new relationship that she jumps into that "we did not yet know the worst things about each other" (p. 235).

There should be a WAIT before you really know someone. And usually before a couple has sufficiently waited, they have bonded in "love" or more likely lust, and now feel close. BUT YET they don't really know each other, and, most likely, just know the best versions of each other: the desirable sheen.

There's always something sacred to the sexually assaulted woman, but it usually isn't sex. Roxane writes about the meaning of hugs for her: "A hug means something to me; it is an act of profound intimacy" (p.258).

She also writes of her perceived "inability to overcome my past" (p. 260). For me, seeing how rape is related to blurrier sexually coercive situations, including medical coercion, actually helps, because then rape becomes not an isolated incident, but weaved into the sorry-state of today's sneak-driven society.

Sexual assault is hard to crawl back from and there are some harsh reviewers here, their dismissive attitudes can come abusively close to the perpetrator's energy. Treat Roxane, and all the "Roxanes" with thinner bodies, kindly, respectfully, because that's only the beginning of the way back from abuse for all of society. Because, until that day, and I am not optimistic that that day will come, I will feel as Roxane feels: "angry when I think about how my sexuality has been shaped" (p. 246) AND....

..."weary of all our sad stories--not hearing them, but that we have these stories to tell, and that there are so many" (p.247).

4 people found this helpful

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Cadie A.

Many 5-star and 1-star ratings missing the point of Hunger

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 8, 2019

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That is my own measly opinion, of course. I think this book left people confused on either end of the spectrum, in different ways. I've read 1-star ratings calling it boring, disappointing, circular, with no light at the end of the tunnel; the memoir of a very unlikable human being who gets nowhere in this book.

Like it's meant to be some kind of fairy tale, or the lesson to be learned is meant to leave the reader feeling accomplished and good. Like wisdom always feels good or something.

Or the 5-star ratings that praise this as though it's this suspenseful and emotionally captivating read—which I personally feel is misleading and such a misrepresentation of why this book exists.

"LOVE IT!!!" feels cheap. Calling this book amazing feels like a lie.

When I started reading Hunger, I knew I was going into a memoir that was probably going to feel very uncomfortable; both in just reading about the real trauma a real person had experienced, and the fact that I have also suffered trauma. I am also obese and have experienced the fear of losing weight for the same reasons the author has and does. I get it and I felt myself bearing down and then a dull sense of disturbance fill my stomach as I got closer to what I knew lived in the pages of this memoir.

I read a life that seemed very similar to mine; at a certain point I even felt a sting of annoyance that someone wrote down my story and got the success that I probably could've had a long time ago. I lived this life, in my own ways—so much of it was terribly familiar to me. Some moments mirrored my own, and some situations I couldn't even begin to imagine myself in.

I'm wondering if those who got nothing out of this really missed the point of what Roxane's memoir is. She's not here to teach us a moral, or to leave us feeling empowered in our obesity, or giving anyone a sense of moral high ground.

This memoir reads as a practice in pure catharsis—an attempt at validating her own traumas and seeing how it latched onto her and changed her perception of herself. It's not about the reader and really whatever they're hoping to get out of it; Roxane is showing us the very experiences that closely reflect those similar to her.

Yes, it is redundant because trauma doesn't just go away. Trauma follows and manifests over and over again, however the brain makes it until the person is able to resolve it. That resolution, though?—sometimes it never shows up. Sometimes, trauma looks like decades of just eating, chatting online, the same list of stupid choices, failed jobs and grades, evictions, severed relationships, and the same relationships that hurt someone the first time the trauma happened.

Years upon years of the same BS, neverending. Always going. And for an obese person—an obese woman of color—Roxane Gay's memoir is chronic and endemic, and it's deeply disturbing and can feel the reader with hopelessness.

Some readers found this book boring because it just repeated the same things over and over. They lost interest. They ask, "What is in this for me? I want my money back! DO NOT READ, EVERYONE."

If this book is anything, it is a practice in empathy for those whose lives have been debilitated and left in Limbo by the foul choices of others—even children, as Roxane Gay had been victim to. And in saying that, I will say that from my perspective, the people complaining about how bored they were and how disappointed that they didn't get any helpful advice or "wisdom" out of this memoir completely failed in that practice.

Welcome to trauma. Welcome to sexual trauma. Welcome to rape. Welcome to PTSD. Welcome to eating disorders. And welcome to all of those things, wrapped up into a life that spent years being unresolved, misunderstood, unnoticed, invalidated, and left to rot—all because anyone could see was that Roxane Gay was fat.

166 people found this helpful

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brandi

beautiful book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 21, 2022

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such a good book, loved it so much

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Courtney & Jim Sadler

Living with trauma

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2022

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I saw Roxane speak on a PBS NewsHour segment recently, and she sounded like she had some thought-provoking ideas going on in this book. Or maybe, just the idea OF the book was thought-provoking, because she talks about weight and self-esteem, but it's not like most women or men who have sold memoirs about how they have successfully lost weight. Instead, it's an account of living with the trauma of rape.

As a heavy person whose weight has yo-yo-ed my whole life, I obviously can connect with her on feeling visible and invisible simultaneously. Also, while I have never been raped, I do carry trauma. I think anyone with any kind of trauma would find her story relatable. But, if you aren't fat and haven't lived through some kind of trauma, reading this book might still resonate with you.

Many of the chapters read like stand alone essays. For this reason, the memoir is very easy to read. You don't have to recall a lot of obscure facts from previous chapters to progress through the story. Some of the chapters seem redundant, but it's possible that the redundancy underscores how the author grapples with her trauma. (I have heard that feeling grief is like getting hit by ocean waves. Initially, like in a storm, the waves come hard and fast, so you might be triggered with greater frequency. But as the storm passes, as time passes, the waves develop a rolling in and rolling out rhythm. Not as unrelenting, but still there.)

I am looking forward to reading her earlier book Bad Feminist, now that I know about it.

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Top reviews from other countries

Hande Z

Flight from the cage

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 3, 2017

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‘The frustrating thing about cages is that you’re trapped but you can see exactly what you want’. RG was raped when she was 12, and then she ate and ate until her body became a fortress. But then she admits that when she was young she knew nothing about anything. She kept her secret and misunderstood her body. She was led to that belief by the world that worships thinness.

Then after she wrote her book ‘Bad Feminism’ there was a photo-shoot for the book promotion. Staring at her full-length body shot she realized that that was her. That was what she looked like. That was the beginning of her coming to peace with herself and the world.

This book is not a sop story. It is not a story that ‘demands to be told and deserves to be read’. It will be impossible not to like RG when one has read the last line of the book and feel with her, sharing her jubilation, enjoying her freedom. It is a book that everyone who is in a cage should read – and who is not in a cage?

16 people found this helpful

Janie U

Powerful, uncomfortable and challenging

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 9, 2018

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I read this author's novel "An Untamed State" recently and was hooked by her approach. Even though it was a novel there was clearly a huge amount of her personal experiences in the narrative. That led me to read this memoir to find out more about her.
The book details her struggles with her body. After a terrifying experience as a teenager she ate as a form of protection which resulted in a lifelong battle with obesity. Her weight remains a powerful identifier.
In the book RG is incredibly honest - I actually struggled to believe that someone was brave enough to say everything she does. Almost everyone struggles with weight at some point and to some degree or another, this means that there will be something in this book that will be familiar. Her reactions and weight issues are more extreme than most people's but she writes in such a frank manner that there is no opportunity (or desire) to judge her choices.
Admittedly this goes against some of the morals of the book but I loved the cover of the edition I read (end of a fork), although it took me a while to work it out!!
I try very hard to be non judgmental and think I can often empathise with people who are different from me, however I found reading this book quite hard. RG made me analyse my attitude to people who are overweight. I came away from this book vowing to work harder on my approach to other people and will also try to influence how others see fat people. I genuinely had no idea how hard it is to do the most simple of tasks (sit on a chair in a restaurant, walk through a door and many others).
This is a difficult read and is uncomfortable but it is meant to be - that reaction is the only way to acknowledge some understanding of the author.

13 people found this helpful

lucy j hailey

Game changer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 22, 2018

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Before I read this book, I never knew that anyone else felt like I did about their body image. I have wasted my whole life on self destructive behavior towards myself. I'm 52 and I hope someone young reads this book before they take the same path as me.

14 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

One of the best books I have read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 20, 2020

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Quite simply this book is incredible. Perhaps without even meaning to it has put into words lot of how I feel. My trauma may be very different but many of the comments Roxane makes about herself I could have said about myself. The power of this is that I often reacted with shock or sadness wanting to support Roxane and tell her it wasn't her fault, that she is enough, before she then gives the same responses I give. Maybe just maybe if I can so confidently be on Roxane 's side to believe she is enough perhaps this means I might be too.I
If anyone wants to understand how I feel this is the book to read

One person found this helpful

Ann Murphy

Incredibly Brave

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 28, 2021

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A brilliantly raw book. I reread parts of this book because it reflected my own experience of abuse and the subsequent, life-long battle with food. To be a woman in this world is to battle stereotypes, and male beliefs about women’s bodies and how they ‘should’ be. Roxane expresses the deeper struggles of both body weight issues and woman’s need to free herself from the prison of societal beliefs. Every woman should read this. Most will recognise their own struggle. I certainly did.

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