Hunger by Roxane Gay
This book is raw. It’s empowering. It’s honest. It’s painful. It’s so much more than I expected it to be.
I’ve been wanting to read Hunger by Roxane Gay for a while. I was first introduced to her on Jameela Jamil’s Podcast, I Weigh and ever since she shared a sprinkle of her story, I was hooked. My main intrigue of Roxane Gay cake from the fact that she is a tall, fat woman, often a description I use for myself.
Of course, upon reading her book and looking at her photos, I cannot compare my own fatness to hers, as we are in two different levels of the word. In fact, this is a point she brings up in her book. Often times, plus-sized women are categorized in one form; having curves, being “thick”, or wearing between a size 10-16. Gay points out that this is just the semi-socially acceptable form of a plus-sized woman and that she does not fall into that category, being well over a size 16, at a size 42.
In the plus-size world, a world I’ve been personally apart of my entire life, I always saw myself as being at the furthest end of the spectrum, however, this book and a few other self-proclaimed “fat” women have opened my eyes to the reality that my size is not as big as it gets, and that there are many women bigger than me who have an entirely different set of social issues caused by their size. For one, many clothing stores don’t recognize any size over 22 or so, which makes buying clothes incredibly difficult. Women of Gay’s size are often ridiculed, harassed, and shamed in public for their appearance in a way that completely dehumanizes them. Many of the accessibility privileges people of my size and smaller take for granted are non-existent for those of Gay’s size, especially when it comes to airplanes, restaurants, movie theaters, and much more.
I’m not going to go further into the details of society’s fatphobia because I want you to read this book, but instead, I wanted to also share another reason why I chose and ultimately ended up loving this memoir. This book is the raw and honest story of how Roxane Gay used her body and her fat to create a physical barrier between her and predators following her traumatic experience of being gang-raped by multiple boys from her school when she was 15.
Yeah, that sentence is exactly as mortifying as you think. Not only do I admire Gay’s ability to come forth and share her story of becoming a victim AND a survivor, but also being strong enough to be as candid and transparent as she can be given the circumstance. I admire the fact that Gay wrote and published this book while in the middle of her story, and that she is honest with her readers in that she’s not fully healed from her trauma, nor might she ever be. I hate what happened to Gay, but I love that she’s willing to share her story while in the process of learning to love and accept her body. I love that this one book advocates and spreads awareness for so much; fatphobia, homophobia, accessibility, sexual assault, and so much more.
I don’t think you have to be a “fat woman” to read this book. In fact, I would hope that non-fat people pick up and copy and take a read so they can put themselves in the shoes of someone incredibly different from themselves.
I know reading and hearing about rape is a difficult topic, but if you have the heart for it, I think you should read this book. A lot of people don’t understand the lifelong repercussions that rape and sexual assault victims face in the years following their attack, but Gay uses her life as a prime example of how that trauma can stay and haunt you forever.
Hunger might’ve made me cry, but it also opened my eyes to Roxane Gay’s world, and for that among many other reasons, I would highly recommend reading this book.