Every human that I know and trust in my life has heard me rave about this book. I’m going to keep my lunatic love for Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body to a tight word count here, but please know that if we are sitting together for any length of time, and the opportunity to talk about it comes up, you won’t be allowed to get a word in edgewise for probably at least two hours. I love it. I love Roxane Gay’s voice. I […]
“I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.”
I have vaguely heard of Roxane Gay through Cannonball and Twitter but I haven’t read Bad Feminist, so Hunger is my first taste of her writing and it was delicious. “The bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.” Roxane Gay is a “woman of size” who, like Lindy West, she uses the word Fat to describe her body. I related a lot to Roxane although I am what she would refer to as “Lane Bryant” fat since I am only about 40 pounds overweight. […]
We All Hunger
I read Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist a few months ago and immediately put her next book, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body on my library request list. I described the former as unpacking the racist, misogynistic, and otherwise flawed world we live in. This book is that, but turned inward. Gay reckons with the great violence which was a turning point in her life and how it created in her a need to protect herself by becoming ever larger. She also discusses candidly what it […]
Not My Favorite
Best for: People who really enjoy short stories that have more sex than your average book. In a nutshell: Collection of short stories about many different interesting women. Line that sticks with me: “In the complex calculus between men and women, Milly understands that fat is always ugly and that ugly and skinny makes a woman eminently more desirable than fat and any combination such as beautiful, charming, intelligent, or kind.” (p 163) Why I chose it: I really enjoyed Roxane Gay’s nonfiction work and […]
Allowing Humanity and Complexity to Coexist
I have read many reviews of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist over the past few years, and I still don’t know if I really understood what I was getting myself into. But that isn’t a bad thing. At its core, this is a book about Gay coming into herself, and owning exactly who she is, without reservation. She walks the reader through her outlook, her struggles as a woman in the world to live up to being a feminist, or not wanting to be associated with […]
“My father believes hunger is in the mind. I know differently. I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.”
“For so long, I closed myself off from everything and everyone. Terrible things happened and I had to shut down to survive. I was cold, I’ve been told. I often write stories about women who are perceived as cold and resent that perception. I write these women because I know what it’s like to have so much warmth roiling beneath the skin’s surface, ready to be found. I am not cold. I wasn’t ever cold. My warmth was hidden far away from anything that could bring […]