Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Hambre

Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Hambre by Roxane Gay

136 reviews

katie0528's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

A beautiful, heartbeaking story of Roxanne Gay's relationship with herself and her body. Gay explores her painful, often contridictory attitudes toward her body and how she is able to, or oftentimes UNable to, move through the world as a fat, Black, queer woman. I'm huge fan of Aubrey Gordon's work and she shouted out this book specifically, and it was disheartening to learn how much of Gay and Gordon's lives as fat women are the same and how the world tries to exclude them or shame them.

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xabbeylongx's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

2.0

~~SPOILERS AHEAD~~

Book Review:

This is my second attempt at reading Gay’s memoir, and I finally finished it, this time. There are quite a lot of trigger warnings, so if you’re likely to become affected, this book isn’t for you.

I don’t like to criticise memoir’s, as I don’t think it’s right; someone has poured their heart out, and if you’re talking about the content the memoir, it can get really personal. So, I’m going to start off by saying that I really liked this book because it was so personal, and Gay bared all by writing it. It has a lot of content that others would maybe try and hide, as she did for all those years, but I really like how she now tells us about it. Her character growth is insane, and I love reading about it.

Second of all, I’d like to say this book is so thorough, so in depth, and it’s nice to read a memoir so realistic. I, too, struggle with my weight, and it’s so incredibly refreshing to read about someone with similar-ish struggles to me. It’s validating! Reading about everything that has happened to her, every personal hell she’s had to deal with… I mean, there is a lot I cannot comment on or even begin to understand. However, with regards to the weight prejudice and the eating disorder, I really like how it’s not sugar-coated, and I liked reading it from someone else’s POV.

I’d say that, personally for me, some of the writing itself was a bit repetitive. I liked the small chapters that were put in, but sometimes, they weren’t necessary. A lot of the time I was reading over it, and I was thinking that I had already read it, but it was actually a different part. It also had a bit of a mismatched order, in my opinion, but I am a stickler for chronological memoirs, so that’s just my preference. It was quite a good read though, even if I found it did take me a while to finish it.

Book Summary:

Roxane Gay talks about her struggles with her weight, and her experience with eating disorders.

After an incident of r*pe from someone she loved and trusted, she turned to food for comfort. She wanted to be in a ‘bigger’ body, in order to keep herself safe, and to try and stop people from looking at her. She ate and she ate, until everyone around her was worried about her size.

She dropped out of college, and disappeared for a while, wanting to get away from her parent’s disappointment. She gave her body to many people, men and women, because she felt she didn’t deserve to be treated nicely. She wanted to lose weight, but she would lose weight, and then become nervous because of the attention, and then would put it all back on again. She wasn’t happy with how she looked, and tried many diets. For a few years or so, she would often would eat as much as she could and vomit it back up. Slowly, she was learning how much she was damaging her body, and she was starting to try and change her mentality and find herself worthy of love.

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naomiwinograd's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

This was a tough book to get through. I almost cried several times, and i’m not a very emotional person. This book deserves no less than 5 stars because of how perfectly it depicted her story and how necessary it was to be told. It’s brave for anyone to tell their story, because it’s terrifying. (I don’t need to elaborate, read the book) But it gives other women hope. It honestly changed my whole perspective. I’ve always been on her side with these sorts of things but she made me not only realize WHY i fight for these things but also made me passionate about them. As someone with a BMI under 30 i never really understood fat phobia to a great extent. Maybe I never will. But she really helped me get closer and i think any book that does that is a good one. Highly recommend.

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kgrace315's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

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finnthehuman217's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

5.0

The way Dr. Gay talks about her trauma with so much vulnerability is something I could never do! I feel like this spoke to me as a fat trans woman. My body is already objectified by society and because I’m fat i have another reason to be shamed by society because once we get down to it, being fat is considered “unhealthy” and Dr. Gay talks about how she became fat to make herself unattractive and take her control back from the people who hurt her is so important. This was a great book!

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sophia66201's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

4.75

definitely hard to get through at some points but very well written. challenging and thought provoking. a beautiful book written with shocking honesty, covering self hatred, desire, and trauma and how it can impact our bodies

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