Hunger by Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay’s memoir, Hunger, has been on my to-read list for some time and I thought I had some idea of what I was getting into. However, I was not prepared for how immensely readable this book was but how gut wrenchingly brutal it was at the same time. For those who haven’t read it (or read about it) the subtitle is “A Memoir of (My) Body” and it is the verbal equivalent of Roxane Gay stripping naked, standing in front of her readers, and […]
I listened to Roxane Gay read her own book, Hunger: A Memoir Of (My) Body. It was a soul punch. Maybe I shouldn’t have listened at a time when I was struggling with feelings about my family, or maybe it was the exact right time. Several versions of this review were only appropriate for my therapist. I am fat, and I was always going to be fat unless I either put myself on a constant, punitive diet, or devoted hours and hours of my day […]
Sometimes when I talk to my students about their writing, I use the metaphor of diving and gymnastics routines, and how they are often (or used to be) graded on a curve of difficulty. So a very hard routine that falls short still get high marks over all. So the student who tried to use the “Mandela Effect” as proof of a multiverse gets a lot of credit trying something audacious, even when it comes up decidedly short. And the student who writes an uninspired […]
I have vaguely heard of Roxane Gay through Cannonball and Twitter but I haven’t read Bad Feminist, so Hunger is my first taste of her writing and it was delicious. “The bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.” Roxane Gay is a “woman of size” who, like Lindy West, she uses the word Fat to describe her body. I related a lot to Roxane although I am what she would refer to as “Lane Bryant” fat since I am only about 40 pounds overweight. […]
“For so long, I closed myself off from everything and everyone. Terrible things happened and I had to shut down to survive. I was cold, I’ve been told. I often write stories about women who are perceived as cold and resent that perception. I write these women because I know what it’s like to have so much warmth roiling beneath the skin’s surface, ready to be found. I am not cold. I wasn’t ever cold. My warmth was hidden far away from anything that could bring […]
