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Gay ate for comfort and to deliberately turn her body into a fortress.
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At the end of the school year Gay’s family moved interstate and she was able to start over at a new school but by then the damage was done. Gay continued to see the boyfriend, who continued to abuse and humiliate her. But those boys told all their friends and Gay subsequently became known as the school slut.
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Gay supports the social movement to accept and celebrate the fat body, although she has little but loathing and hatred for her own.Įarly on in the memoir, Gay explains that at the age of twelve she was gang-raped by her boyfriend and his mates.Gay, an academic with a PhD, understands that to reduce her size she needs to eat less and exercise more yet despite the gyms, the diets, the trainers and the programs she fails to lose weight, over and over again.Gay is an avowed feminist who wishes she were pretty while fully understanding that no woman is ever pretty enough.Her shame, her anger, her guilt and her intellectual awareness of the way those feelings are contradictory to her beliefs, ideas, and values. But at a deeper level Hunger is really about Gay’s mental discomfort. And if that were all Hunger was about it would probably be enough. Gay details her daily indignities and humiliations as a woman of size moving through a world designed for much smaller people. Hunger is so raw, poignant and compelling that it hurts to read it.Īt the most superficial level Hunger is a memoir about Roxane Gay’s body – specifically her very tall (6’3), very large (200 kgs +) body.