Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

An Amazon Best Book of June 2017: If you’re a woman in America, chances are, no matter your size, you probably have a somewhat fetishistic relationship with food. We obsess over having too much, too little (to a lesser degree); we use terms like stealing a bite and guilty pleasure--things that evoke shame, and are meant to keep our bodies in line. For those that fit that (ever narrowing) bill, congratulations! Clothes are designed to fit you, kale growers love you, and so does society. You bask in its glow. The rest risk being in shadow, which is exactly where Roxane Gay wanted to be. In her brutally honest and brave memoir Hunger, Gay recounts a childhood sexual assault that led her to purposely gain weight in order to be unseen and therefore “safe.” Gay warns at the beginning of the book that if you’re looking for a triumphant weight loss memoir, this is not it. But Hunger is a triumph nonetheless. It’s a story not easily told, but the telling set her free. And through Gay’s experience we learn one of lessons she eventually did, that “all of us have to be more considerate of the realities of the bodies of others,” and more accepting of our own. --Erin Kodicek, The Amazon Book Review

• Bad Feminist: Essays
• Difficult Women
• You Have the Right to Remain Fat
• Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman
• Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture
• The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception
• Heavy: An American Memoir
• Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines
• Difficult Women
• Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You