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. […]
We All Hunger
I read Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist a few months ago and immediately put her next book, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body on my library request list. I described the former as unpacking the racist, misogynistic, and otherwise flawed world we live in. This book is that, but turned inward. Gay reckons with the great violence which was a turning point in her life and how it created in her a need to protect herself by becoming ever larger. She also discusses candidly what it […]
“My father believes hunger is in the mind. I know differently. I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.”
“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 […]