Trigger Warning: Discussion of rape, difficult relationships with food
Roxane Gay’s memoir, Hunger, is intensely moving. And although she refers to it as a “confession”, it can undoubtedly be considered a personal story with implications for us all. Gay confronts the unimaginable pain of her past with bravery, and in the words of Ann Pratchett, “shows us how to be decent to ourselves and decent to one another”.
She starts with her childhood at the age of 12, and the watershed moment in her life when in a remote woodland, she was attacked and subjected to a lengthy and traumatic gang-rape by a boy she loved and a group of his friends. Disgusted and terrified, she remained silent and believed that her version of the story would never matter. From here, Gay’s relationship with her body changed drastically, and she turned to food as a way of building a protective body as a shield from the outside world. Food offered comfort, immediate satisfaction, and attending boarding school at aged 13, and then university at 19, only intensified this relationship. Gay was an ‘outsider’, ‘socially awkward’, and throughout her teens and early twenties, merely went through the motions, with loneliness and food as her only companions.
“Food didn’t judge me or demand anything from me. When I ate, I did not have to be anything but myself.” Roxane Gay, Hunger
Attempts by family and friends to support her through phases of dieting and gym memberships were demeaning and humiliating – Gay explains, they “knew nothing of my determination to keep making my body into what I needed it to be – a safe harbour rather than a small, weak vessel that betrayed me”. They did not know what Gay had been through and therefore did not understand the root of her trauma or how best to help. She continued to build a body which would disconnect her from her life and act as a fortress to keep her safe.
Gay then navigates the reader through her adult life – fleeting friendships, abusive relationships and a reliance on the escapist virtual world. She unveils an uncomfortably high number of incidents of prejudice, embarrassment and trauma as a result of her “unruly” body. By recalling these events, she exposes society’s judging and pigeonholing attitudes. She holds society accountable for having misinformed and misjudged preconceptions; for lacking in consciousness and lacking in awareness. This book truly has the ability to change the way we see, think about and understand people and our world – it undoubtedly had that effect on me.
“Writing this book is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. To lay myself so vulnerable has not been an easy thing.” Roxane Gay, Hunger
Gay lays herself vulnerable, and the successes of this book depends less on the style of writing – although extraordinarily engaging – but more on her emotional navigation around female subjectivity. She captures the way that society treats and responds to ‘un-normal’ bodies, as if it is somehow their own fault that they sit on the outside of society’s contrived structures. The most difficult thing about this book, for me, was Gay’s punishment of herself and her body, and the way she tolerated abuse because she did not believe she deserved better. Gay warns early on that this “is not a story of triumph” or “a weight-loss memoir”. Instead, this is an empowering story of someone who finds their voice amid the most injurious circumstances, not by losing weight but by freeing themselves.
She says: “Writing this book is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. To lay myself so vulnerable has not been an easy thing. To face myself and what living in my body has been like has not been an easy thing, but I wrote this book because it felt necessary. In writing this memoir of my body, and telling you these truths about my body, I am sharing my truth and mine alone. I understand if that truth is not something you want to hear. The truth makes me uncomfortable too. But I am also saying, here is my heart, what’s left of it. Here I am showing you the ferocity of my hunger. Here I am, finally freeing myself to be vulnerable and terribly human.”
To be ourselves and to be human is one of the most challenging provocations we face. Hunger is a story that needed to be written – not just for Gay but for us all. It is a challenge to toxic societal norms that dictate how women live their live. It is a challenge to us, to use our voices as Gay does, demanding that we too are seen and heard.
