Summary Of Hunger: A Memoir Of My Body, By Roxane Gay

Mind and Body: Damaged but Alive Because I admire stories of humans triumphing above the obstacles in their lives, I expected Roxane Gay’s “Hunger: A Memoir of (my) Body” to be another story on eating disorders and an almost miraculous change within a person. But I was surprised by the idea of “an unruly body”, as Gay calls her body, who is oppressed by society, to be free without having to lose the weight nor having the approval of society. Gay is an accomplished Haitian American female author, which in “Hunger” talks about the struggles of her body, her trauma and how she has triumphed above the harsh glares of societal eyes.
Gay begins the book by making it clear that what followed was not a weight loss story, not a story of a physical …show more content…
She makes a clear path to where she is trying to get to, in the beginning clearly stating that her fatness stemmed from being raped, that she was still a victim but that she is still going through the processes of healing. As best said, it is painfully honest memoir on the life of a plus-sized woman. Gay goes in chronological order of events, starting of with the image of a small brown-skinned girl who would smile and wear dresses, and ending with her damaged but healing forty year old self. She lays out her book in chapters chunked as the Gay before the rape and the Gay after the rape, showing the logic of her issues as catalysed by the boys in the cabin. She repeatedly states that eating made her feel safe, to be large and unattractive to men was where she felt safe. But she was full of contradictions; she wants to be large and visible yet feels the need to hide in her home behind baggy men clothing. Gay defines two terms very clearly in her book,what it is to be a victim and what it meant to be a survivor. Gay placed herself in the definition of a victim as she felt that calling herself a survivor undermined the hurt that she still faces. To be a survivor, to Gay, was to have overcome her difficulties and in a sense emerging from the cocoon which she armored herself with and be her most genuine self, to which she claims she cannot do …show more content…
I felt like I was wrestling with my emotions as I tried to read on, the repetitive mention of her rape became less and less the catalyst for the book but the main focus at some parts. It felt as if her rape was the only driving force for her, that if she had not been raped she would have not felt that way towards others. I found myself thinking, “did I accidentally reread the same part?”, as I read, Gay reasserting her claims by repeating them, over and over again. I no longer felt empowered, I felt the need to question if what I believed about my self-worth and my own body issues; did my weight loss make my personal triumph less valid and if so should I regain the weight that I had so desperately lost? Gay does not blatantly state that being body positive was bad, but that the movement as a whole was flawed in that they expressed love for all but only those who would fit in anything below a size 26 at Lane Bryant would actually receive. Gay’s message is a call to action to society, for society to step up and open a conversation on fatness, that no one deserves to feel the pain she was reminded of when she saw a young girl crying as her mother told her she was too fat in order to be pretty. Gay’s book comes with its flaws but has merit, Gay speaks about issues and situations in such graphic detail that it is impossible to ignore that the issues are