The book begins as an account of her life, and includes Gay’s trademark commentary on popular culture, such as The Biggest Loser and the Kardashians.įrom the first page, Gay guarantees no simple or happy conclusions about weight loss or moving past trauma.
Hunger is a wrenching self-examination in which Gay analyzes her body, and the weight she’s gained in response to her sexual assault trauma.
Now, after finishing Hunger, I understand the emotional fortitude necessary to write this book. It was the kind of statement characteristic of Gay’s work: direct, arresting, and unapologetic, the kind of statement that has made her a New York Times bestselling author and cultural icon. I was in that audience that day, and I heard the people around me collectively inhale the simple power of those words. It was May of 2016, and Gay was referring to Hunger, her much anticipated memoir. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to write, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever written,” Roxane Gay said to a crowd gathered to hear her deliver the PEN World Voices Festival’s Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture. J“t’s frustrating that the expectation is for women to have to apologize for fatness and then do this elaborate weight loss in the public eye.” Roxane Gay on Hunger, Trauma, and the Unruly Body
