Gay details the tragic events that occurred in her adolescence- giving her love to the undeserved, that person taking advantage of her, being raped, feeling broken and unworthy. Hunger is also a book about Roxane Gay’s past sexual trauma. It was therapeutic to read these thoughts in a book. Many, many of the challenges, concerns, anxieties that she talks about in this book I too struggle with. There were passages in this book that I honestly thought Gay plucked straight from my brain. As a fat woman currently struggling with her weight and self-image, it knocked me back. As a fat woman, this book resonated with me. This book was not an easy book to get through emotionally (I teared up on page 8), but it was easy to read.
Hunger is a book about Roxane Gay’s human body. I’m so thankful I read this book at this time in my life.
Then, once my small book haul came in, I again looked at my options and AGAIN Hunger jumped out to me. I had remembered a friend suggesting Gay’s “Bad Feminist” to me years ago (I bought it, but have yet to read it). I wasn’t hunting out Roxane Gay’s “Hunger: a Memoir of (My) Body”, but it jumped out at me when I was perusing the online options. As I’ve talked about, I hadn’t read a book fully in 2 years… No matter how many amazing books I bought/rented, I just could not force myself through them.
