Gay’s problem was compounded by her gender. It’s something medical personnel want to treat and which they get paid to correct.
Saying someone is obese is an accusation of something that is wrong with a person. It’s because it’s something we can so readily see. Our society is very critical of someone who overindulges in food rather than something less visible such as alcohol, drugs, or sex. Reading this book opened many of our eyes to how someone who is overweight feels about being looked at. For a family that was so accepting of her bisexuality, surely they could accept something that she suffered so terribly. We think they would have been more than understanding and helped her get the justice and guidance she needed. One thing that stood out to us was her not being able to tell her family about the rape until years later. This contradiction carries through the book. She’s scared to be small because she thinks that if she is, she could be raped again. Roxane has the conflicting desires to be larger and unattractive to men but to receive the rewards that she sees as coming with weight loss and being small. The subject matter was very personal and it felt like the reader was almost too involved in her life to the point of being obtrusive. I can’t get it, even after reading this book. No matter how many times she repeated it, though, someone who’s never been her size will never understand what it’s like for her. I guess it’s hard to criticize someone’s raw pain.
Roxane gay hunger discussion topics professional#
Interestingly, there were not many professional reviews that had anything negative to say about the book. Many felt the book itself was a bit long and repetitive. She read it in a very monotone voice and some felt it didn’t give the subject matter the right amount of gravitas that a professional reader may have given it. Gay spoke slowly and some readers listened at a faster speed. There were a range of opinions about the narration. I wasn’t the only person who listened to the audiobook. It was a very emotional book and it made very a very emotional discussion! And through Gay’s experience we learn one of lessons she eventually did, that “all of us have to be more considerate of the realities of the bodies of others,” and more accepting of our own.My book club met to discuss Roxane Gay’s Hunger last week. It’s a story not easily told, but the telling set her free. In her brutally honest and brave memoir Hunger, Gay recounts a childhood sexual assault that led her to purposely gain weight in order to be unseen and therefore “safe.” Gay warns at the beginning of the book that if you’re looking for a triumphant weight loss memoir, this is not it. The rest risk being in shadow, which is exactly where Roxane Gay wanted to be. For those that fit that (ever narrowing) bill, congratulations! Clothes are designed to fit you, kale growers love you, and so does society. We obsess over having too much, too little (to a lesser degree) we use terms like stealing a bite and guilty pleasure-things that evoke shame, and are meant to keep our bodies in line. Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and tells a story that hasn’t yet been told but needs to be.Įditorial Review An Amazon Best Book of June 2017: If you’re a woman in America, chances are, no matter your size, you probably have a somewhat fetishistic relationship with food.
With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and authority that have made her one of the most admired voices of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen.
In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. Louis Post-Dispatch PopSugar BookRiot Library Journal Booklist Kirkus Reviews Shelf Awareness
A best book of 2017: Time NPR People Elle The Washington Post The Los Angeles Times The Chicago Tribune Newsday St.