Hunger

A Memoir of (My) Body

By: Roxane Gay

Narrated by: Roxane Gay

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: 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.”

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, 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 explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

Deeply Touching Memoir

I'm glad I listened to this book for many, many reasons. It was my intro to Roxane Gay and I am so glad she was brought to my attention. Her perspectives have caused me to consider things that had not occurred to me. Other times, I felt she was recording my thoughts- familiar struggles many women share.

This is not a weight loss how to/ journey. It's so much more. I highly recommend this stirring personal account. This contemporary, so very honest writer has a new reader in me.

Powerful and beautiful

The story of Gay's relationship with her body is beautifully told in this book, and her own narration of it makes it feel as if you are having an intimate conversation with her. It is difficult material but important, and powerfully written.

A piece that will make you think.

Although the topic of this book is HER body, it is a story, a memoir, with which almost everyone will find something to identify.

A true revelation in the land of revealing memoirs

Would you consider the audio edition of Hunger to be better than the print version?

Yes. Gay's writing is always wonderfully descriptive and on-point but for this, her most personal tale, having her bring it to life takes it over the edge.

What did you like best about this story?

Gay's willingness to reveal all of the twists, turns, and bumps in her story, exposing not only the trauma that shaped her life for so long but also the spiral-out that followed, is an act of pure bravery. Putting aside that Gay leads a public life, in the real world and on Twitter, where indignities large and small are dealt out daily, her ability to squarely look at her catalyst, motivation, and own actions is a gift that brings us along for an at-times painful, but ultimately uplifting journey. She says at the beginning that hers "is not a story of triumph" because it doesn't end with her many sizes thinner, but it is actually something even more precious: a story of realistic hope. Hope for our ability to not only endure, but to thrive and grow.

What about Roxane Gay’s performance did you like?

Gay maintains an at-times distractingly modulated tone throughout but the warmth and emotion in her voice more than conveyed all you needed to know about her struggles with everything from her weight to her lovers to herself.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I had to pause the book for a day or so during the section when she describes her attack. The pain of it all...the description of the actions, the emotion in her voice... it was too much to bear in one sitting. That was just a hint at how horrible it had to have been for her to have endured.

Wow! A very honest and vulnerable book

I was thinking this book would be about Roxanne’s struggle with weight and it was, but it was so much more. Roxanne is very brave to share her story of rape and her honest opinions about her body, the difficulties that come with being a larger person and her most intimate experiences. At times, this book made me very sad. It also made me wonder how many more people have been victims of sexual assault who have remained silent. Excellent book! I wanted to go back in time and help 12 year old Roxanne tell her parents and punish her rapists and comfort her. I hope she will one day forgive her rapists. Forgiving them will free her, I promise that. This book is very deep and real.