a book

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

Name: Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
Rating: 5 (12 reviews)
Author: Roxane Gay
ISBN: 9780062420718

Roxane Gay · 2017 · 320 pages

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.

recommended by 12 people

sourced from public statements

Emma Watson
“While parts of the book are difficult to read, it highlights the very real damage done by sexual violence and puts you in the mind and body of someone that has to move through the world in a different way. A small insight or perspective I feel grateful for now having and understanding a little bit better.”↗
Laurie Halse Anderson
“This is the most important, riveting book I’ve read in the past decade. The first time I read Gay’s account of her gang rape at age 12 and its life-defining aftermath, it was with my eyes. Then I reread it with my ears. Gay reads the audiobook herself; her voice adds another layer of power to the narrative.”↗
Ann Patchett
“It opened my eyes to how we are judgmental without realising it, and the burden that places on the recipient. It’s a great book, and a great reminder about all we don’t know about other people’s lives.”↗
Jameela Jamil
“A life-changing book, Gay’s memoir tells the horrific story of how she was gang-raped aged 12 and the aftermath that led to her using her body as both a shield and an act of defiance.”↗
Megan Rapinoe
“This book took my breath away. Roxane Gay gives a gut-wrenching and enlightening look into her story, while uncovering the ways our society makes being a woman and having a body so damn hard.”↗
Min Jin Lee
“I read Gay’s memoir in two days, and I stopped everything to read it, because her story meant so much to me. I’d had a very bad eating disorder in college, and her story made so much sense intellectually. Gay is one of America’s great writers, and I was astonished and grateful to learn how our bodies hold our histories and how our minds have the power to release them. This book is important and beautiful.”↗
All 32 of Emma Watson
“Roxane Gay describes her book Hunger as a ‘memoir about my body’. It traverses many of the issues surrounding our human bodies, the sexual experiences we have, our relationship with food, how we feel about our own bodies and the difference gender has to play on a body…While parts of the book are difficult to read, it highlights the very real damage done by sexual violence and puts you in the mind and body of someone that has to move through the world in a different way. A small insight or perspective I feel grateful for now having and understanding a little bit better.”↗
April Reign
“@stewartdantec I’ve intentionally read a lot of books this year and Hunger by @rgay has really stayed with me. More on my list at #AprilReads”↗
Gretchen Rubin
Anna Kendrick
Brian Earp
Dana Schwartz