Hunger (Gay)

Hunger:  A Memoir of (My) Body
Roxane Gay, 2017
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062747891


Summary
A searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.

"I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere.… I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe."

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.

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.

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.

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. 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. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—October 26, 1974
• Where—Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• Education—Ph.D., Michigan Technicalogical University
• Currently—lives in Layfayette, Indiana, and Los Angeles, California


Roxane Gay is an American feminist writer, professor, editor and commentator. She is an associate professor of English at Purdue University, contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, essays editor for The Rumpus, and co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective.

Early life and education
Gay was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to a family of Haitian descent. She attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

Gay holds a doctoral degree in rhetoric and technical communication from Michigan Technological University. The title of her dissertation was, "Subverting the subject position: toward a new discourse about students as writers and engineering students as technical communicators."

Career
After completing her Ph.D., Gay began her academic teaching career in Fall 2010 at Eastern Illinois University, where she was assistant professor of English. While at EIU, in addition to her teaching duties she was a contributing editor for Bluestem magazine, and she also founded Tiny Hardcore Press. Gay worked at Eastern Illinois University until the end of the 2013-2014 academic year, taking a job in August 2014 at Purdue University as associate professor of creative writing.

Much of Gay's written work deals with the analysis and deconstruction of feminist and racial issues through the lens of her personal experiences with race, gender identity, and sexuality. She is the author of the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and Hunger (2017).

She also edited the book Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies. In addition to her regular contributions to Salon and the now defunct HTMLGiant, her writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, West Branch, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, Bookforum, Time, Los Angeles Times, The Nation and New York Times Book Review.

In July 2016, Gay and poet Yona Harvey were announced as writers for Marvel Comics' World of Wakanda, a spin-off from the company's Black Panther title, making her the first black woman to be a lead writer for Marvel.

Reception
Gay's publication of the novel An Untamed State and essay collection Bad Feminist in the summer of 2014 led Time Magazine to declare, "Let this be the year of Roxane Gay." The magazine noted of her inclusive style: "Gay’s writing is simple and direct, but never cold or sterile. She directly confronts complex issues of identity and privilege, but it’s always accessible and insightful."

In the United Kingdom's The Guardian, critic Kira Cochrane offered a similar assessment:

While online discourse is often characterised by extreme, polarised opinions, her writing is distinct for being subtle and discursive, with an ability to see around corners, to recognise other points of view while carefully advancing her own. In print, on Twitter and in person, Gay has the voice of the friend you call first for advice, calm and sane as well as funny, someone who has seen a lot and takes no prisoners.

A group of feminist scholars and activists analyzed Gay's Bad Feminist for "Short Takes: Provocations on Public Feminism," an initiative of the feminist journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

Personal
Gay began writing essays as a teenager; her work has been greatly influenced by a sexual assault she experienced at age 12. She is also a competitive Scrabble player in the U.S. Gay is bisexual. (From Wkipedia. Retrieved 2/2/2017 .)

Book Reviews
Gay turns to memoir in this powerful reflection on her childhood traumas.… Timely and resonant, you can be sure that Hunger will touch a nerve, as so much of Roxane Gay’s writing does.
Newsday


Wrenching, deeply moving…a memoir that’s so brave, so raw, it feels as if [Gay]’s entrusting you with her soul.
Seattle Times


(Starred review.) This raw and graceful memoir digs deeply into what it means to be comfortable in one’s body. Gay denies that hers is a story of “triumph,” but readers will be hard pressed to find a better word.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Displays bravery, resilience, and naked honesty from the first to last page.… Stunning…essential reading.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) A heart-rending debut memoir from the outspoken feminist and essayist.… An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath.
Booklist


(Starred review.) A heart-rending debut memoir from the outspoken feminist and essayist.… An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Hunger…then take off on your own:

1. Probably the best place to begin a discussion for Roxane Gay's Hunger is to talk about your own battle with body image: weight gains and losses, sense of shame, and whatever other emotional rollercoasters you've found yourself on.

2. Next up: In what ways does this book resonate with you? Think back to your early life, your upbringing, and how those years might have set you on the path you're on today.

3. Gay was the victim of rape when she was younger. How does that tramua play into her overeating?

4. Consider the views of other people. As Gay writes, "People see bodies like mine and make their assumptions. They think they know the why of my body. They do not."

What assumptions do you make of overweight peoople? What assumptions do you think people make (or might make) of you?

5. Talk about the paradox Gay points to: wanting acceptance for her body shape…yet wanting to change it. Can that tension ever be resolved — not just for overweight people but for anyone who doesn't fit the image of physical perfection our society worships?

6. Speaking of society: in what way does our cultural obsession with body shape contribute to Gay's (or, really, almost anyone's) sense of shame regarding the body?

7. Gay writes: "I do not know why I turned to food. Or I do" and "I do not have an answer to that question, or I do." What does Gay know…or not know about why she eats? What about you? Do you have answers for your own body weight?

8. Why does Gay denounce shows like The Biggest Loser and Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition?

9. Care to tackle this passage from the book?

When you’re overweight, your body becomes a matter of public record in many respects. Your body is constantly and prominently on display.… Fat, much like skin color, is something you cannot hide, no matter how dark the clothing you wear, or how diligently you avoid horizontal stripes.… People are quick to offer statistics and information about the dangers of obesity, as if you are not only fat but incredibly stupid, unaware, and delusional about your body and a world that is vigorously inhospitable to that body.… You are your body, nothing more, and your body should damn well become less.

10. How familiar are you with the latest science regarding body weight, particularly the part that genetics and "hunger hormones" (Ghrelin and Leptin) play? If some bodies are hard-wired to gain weight …well, then what?

11. If Roxane Gay were sitting with you right now, what you you say to her?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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