The book’s short, sharp chapters come alive in vivid personal anecdotes. The result is a generous and empathic consideration of what it’s like to be someone else: in itself something of a miracle.
In 88 short, lucid chapters, Gay powerfully takes readers through realities that pain her, vex her, guide her, and inform her work. It’s hard to imagine this electrifying book being more personal, candid, or confessional. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)ĭisplays bravery, resilience, and naked honesty from the first to last page. An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath. Publishers Weekly (starred review)Ī heart-rending debut memoir from the outspoken feminist and essayist. Gay denies that hers is a story of “triumph,” but readers will be hard pressed to find a better word. This raw and graceful memoir digs deeply into what it means to be comfortable in one’s body. Gay turns to memoir in this powerful reflection on her childhood traumas…Timely and resonant, you can be sure that Hunger will touch a nerve, as so much of Roxane Gay’s writing does. a memoir that’s so brave, so raw, it feels as if ’s entrusting you with her soul Seattle Times At its most symphonic, it’s an intellectually rigorous and deeply moving exploration of the ways in which trauma, stories, desire, language and metaphor shape our experiences and construct our reality. Ann Patchett, Commonwealth and Bel CantoĪt its simplest, it’s a memoir about being fat - Gay’s preferred term - in a hostile, fat-phobic world. HUNGER is an amazing achievement in more ways than I can count.
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Roxane Gay shows us how to be decent to ourselves, and decent to one another.
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The book is full of snappy soundbites, powerful little nuggets of truthful goodness.It turns out that when a wrenching past is confronted with wisdom and bravery, the outcome can be compassion and enlightenment-both for the reader who has lived through this kind of unimaginable pain and for the reader who knows nothing of it. This world and its unwillingness to accept and accommodate me are the problem.” Also good:
And violence, of course there is violence: violence against the fat, easily relatable by women with disabilities, as most all of us have been sexually abused at some point in our lives.Īnd it covers the piece about realizing that the problem is not her, as she says, “I recognize that I am not the problem. That is precisely what happens with disability.īackhanded “compliments” like, “don’t say that about yourself” (similar to, “but I don’t think of you as disabled!”) are delved into, as is sexuality – denying oneself kindness and gentle touch, by dint of thinking ourselves unworthy. It covers the public record piece: that when you are fat, your body becomes fodder for public concern and conversation, people always having your “best interests” at heart. The existence of self-consciousness about space, striving for invisibility in public because of the the presence of so much visibility, so much difference. It covers access: from the helpless feeling of rage for lack of foresight with regard to physical accommodation in chairs, airplane seating, to tables in restaurants (and trying to figure out things ahead of time so that she will know how accessible it is). The book is loaded with pieces that you can directly apply to experiences with disability. It intersects race and culture pretty consistently.