A review by xabbeylongx
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

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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