“Hunger: A Memoir of ‘My’ Body” by Roxane Gay

I have been a rather casual fan of Gay’s work for a while, I read Bad Feminist back in 2020 or so but I always like her essays online. I finally picked up this book after she happened to be speaking on campus and mentioned that this was being turned into a movie as well. I knew of this book, but since my main exposure was her essays it just never popped up for me. I’m glad I finally picked it up!

The book is in a format that is very easy to read, most of the chapters are only a few pages and it feels much more like a series of short essays or reflections than a narrative. But there is an underlying story of how Gay was raped as an adolescent and from there turned to eating as a way to protect herself. From there the book is primarily about what it is like going through the world in such a large body, what she struggles with, and how she is trying to heal.

Lately I have been almost obsessed with books that manage to talk about healing and the realities about it. It isn’t pretty or neat or linear. And she talks quite a bit about her process here and how wonky it is and the intersectionalities with being a large, Black woman. It gets driven home for me in a chapter where she talks about how she had to break herself in another way (her ankle) in order to realize how much she had and how much she had to live for. I think that’s such a nice way of getting at it that you just have to hit the right breakage in order to put yourself back together.

The other aspect I really appreciated was her brief discussion about the body positive movement. I am nowhere near her size, but I think talking about how she doesn’t feel there’s a place for her there since she doesn’t totally love her body resonates a lot. I also don’t love my body but want to, and I want to, more importantly, respect it and treat it well.

I am looking forward to trying to find the movie version as this seems like a difficult book to put together on screen. Gay seemed really enthused by it at the event and that is always a good sign. And I really should read more of her works. It just about always hits and captures the nuances of feminism and the like that you don’t see much elsewhere.