That helped quite a lot to recognize, “OK, I am writing a memoir, but I don’t need to give the reader everything. I stuck to my boundaries when push came to shove. I just realized at some point, I really can’t put this off anymore unless I just want to cancel the book, so I just started writing and gritting my teeth and making sure I stuck to my boundaries. How did you overcome the fear or hesitation in sharing your vulnerability for a memoir? But Difficult Women was always going to come out in January 2017. June 2016 came around and I was like, well, it’s not gonna happen. The book became delayed because I just dragged my feet and procrastinated and procrastinated and didn’t write the book. I was actually very resistant to it for a long time. I never really planned on writing memoir. Why was it scary to write this particular memoir about your life? You’ve described the writing process for Hunger as very scary or difficult. It was originally anticipated last year and Difficult Women came out instead earlier this year. Here, Gay discusses the difficulty of in finally writing Hunger, why her new memoir is not a story of triumph, making herself vulnerable to the public and why she doesn’t believe her literary honesty makes her brave. Gay says she didn’t begin to truly confront her past until she was in her thirties. In order to survive, we fit ourselves into the world because the world rarely sees or adapts to survivors.īut gaining weight and developing a difficult relationship to food never truly addressed the underlying trauma. Reclaiming one’s own body, in whatever way that may manifest, is a response to the initial and the reoccurring trauma of assault. Sexual assault is not about sex, but about power. This desire to regain control of one’s own limbs after a traumatic incident. I also thought boys don’t like fat girls.” “I definitely thought, if I’m bigger, I’ll be safer because I’ll be able to fight those boys better. You can follow me on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.For Gay, trauma manifested in a deliberate manipulation and transformation of her own body into a size she once believed would deter the lasciviousness of predatory young men. I’m hoping that one won’t be so emotional, we need a break! I’ve only just started our next book, Dodgers by Bill Beverly. If she ever did it, it would be for herself. We speculated that if Gay did lose the weight, people would comment on it and those comments would likely upset her because she wouldn’t lose weight to gain anyone’s approval. We felt she firmly cemented that she is always going to be big and that she’s OK with it. We wondered if writing this book helped her cope with anything.
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They’re less likely to be stared at in the same manner. We all felt it was easier for a man to be overweight than a woman. 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.
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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.
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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 BOOK 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! My book club met to discuss Roxane Gay’s Hunger last week.