I believe Gay’s biggest asset in this book is her use of language–she writes sentences like these that people can relate to, can connect to, on a deeper level. The fact that these poetic, deeply personal sentences showed up many times surprised me. “The story of my life is wanting, hungering, for what I cannot have, or, perhaps, wanting what I dare not allow myself to have,” Gay writes at one point. My thoughts: In almost every chapter of Hunger, there was a moment when I had to pause and re-read a sentence–not because it was hard to understand, but because it was so profound that in order to grasp the full meaning of it, it needed to be repeated. I needed to feel like a fortress, impermeable.” “The fat created a new body,” she writes early on, “one that shamed me but one that made me feel safe, and more than anything, I desperately needed to feel safe. Here’s a brief overview: In Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Roxane Gay explores with unflinching honesty the story behind her body–why it looks the way it does, how her childhood and trauma shaped it, and the dangerous ways society enforces the connection between thinness and self-worth. Who knew? Anyway, today I’ll be reviewing Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. Turns out that life is very unsympathetic to people who just want to read and do nothing else. Hello readers! I know, I know, it’s been about a month since I last updated (whoops).
