Books › Hunger
Hunger
A Memoir of (My) Body
320 pages
A fiercely intimate and unflinching exploration of trauma, weight, and the desperate search for safety within one's own skin.
What it feels like
Reading this memoir feels like sitting in a quiet room with a brilliant friend who has finally decided to tell you the whole, unvarnished truth. The pace is steady and deliberate, demanding that you slow down and sit with the heavy, often uncomfortable realities of trauma and survival. The prose is strikingly direct, stripped of metaphor to deliver raw, visceral truths about living in a body that society constantly polices and shames. The mood is undeniably somber and heavy, steeped in the lingering shadows of past violence, yet it is also profoundly intimate and ultimately cathartic. It is a book for anyone who has ever tried to shrink themselves to fit the world, offering a powerful testament to the radical act of simply taking up space.
- Mood
- heavy
- somber
- reflective
- cathartic
- intimate
- Tone
- candid
- unflinching
- vulnerable
- intimate
- raw
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- trauma and the body · the illusion of safety · societal fatphobia · aftermath of sexual violence · taking up space
- The writing
- Direct, unadorned, and fiercely honest, utilizing rhythmic repetition to hammer home emotional truths.
- The arc
- Moves from profound, suffocating trauma and self-concealment toward a fragile but powerful space of self-acknowledgment and survival.
- Who it's for
- Readers seeking radical vulnerability and those who have grappled with trauma, body image, or the societal policing of women's bodies.
Content notes
- child sexual abuse
- rape
- eating disorders
- fatphobia
- trauma
- self-harm
About the book
“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.
Description from Open Library.
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