Through Hunger, Roxane Gay gives us a chance to dive deep into her personal experiences that are so common among those who walk through Walden’s doors. It is as compelling as it is devastating and it is beautiful. All of these honest lived experiences are told through the context of her large, dark-skinned, female-loving body.
This book is brutally honest – honest about the trauma of assault, the satisfactions of professional success and the highs and lows of sex and relationships. If I were allowed only one word to describe this book, I would choose honest. She lets the reader connect their own dots. Roxane Gay tells her story quietly, and lets you find your own outrage. They have shown me where I can effect change. Believe me when I tell you that I have learned a lot from those types of books. So many of us at Walden have read books about the connection between weight stigma, Binge Eating Disorder, and poor body image with diet culture, trauma, Photoshop, and the evils of “The Patriarchy.” Many of us have read books that, through their author’s anger, have called us into action. It is hard living in a world that feels ‘too small’ for your body. It’s hard to be overlooked, discounted, harassed, and shamed. It isn’t that Roxane Gay is telling us something we don’t already know – being a fat, African American, feminist, lesbian woman in Western culture in the 21 st Century is hard. Gay warns at the beginning of the book that if you’re looking for a triumphant weight loss memoir, this is not it. 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. The rest risk being in shadow, which is exactly where Roxane Gay wanted to be. I was at once filled up and emptied out by its strikingly candid and intensely personal passages. Clothes are designed to fit you, kale growers love you, and so does society. In case you are pressed for time, I will keep this short and sweet: Hunger is worth the investment of time, even though it is a hard book to read – hard in the ways you would expect when written by an “ intersectional” and marginalized woman.