Author is gay and about hunger book
Simple, repetitive prose
In Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Roxane Gay explores the interconnectedness between her rape, trying to feel safe in her own body, and gaining weight. Gay writes: “This is a publication about my body, about my appetite, and ultimately, this is a guide about disappearing and being lost and wanting so very much, wanting to be seen and understood. This is a book about learning, however tediously, to allow myself to be seen and understood.”
Gay holds nothing back. As she says: “I’ve been forced to look at my guiltiest secrets. I’ve cut myself spacious open. I am exposed. That is not comfortable. That is not easy.” She isn’t hyperbolizing here—this memoir digs deep into her self and her body. As a reader, I was initially uncomfortable creature drawn into such a personal story, but Gay handles this intimacy successfully. She lays it bare without giving gratuitous details—she says it’s still tough to talk about. I can glimpse why. It’s difficult to read about the terrible thing that was done to her and how she’s still healing from it, but it’s significant to read in order to realize Gay’s narrative throughout her memoir and the effect that these things include on women on a societal level.
Simp
Hello, fellow bookworms! Today I’m unveiling Publication #7 in the Finding Delight Guide Club. If you’re new to this series, I’m reading books and sharing about them with you here. I plan to publish 4 times for each book. The current pick is Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay.
“This body is resilient. It can endure all kinds of things. My body offers me the power of presence. My body is powerful.”
Synopsis
In this intimate and searing memoir, the New York Times bestselling creator Roxane Gay addresses the experience of living in a body that she calls ‘wildly undisciplined’. She casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens and twenties – including the devastating behave of violence that was a turning point in her young life – and brings readers into the show and the realities, pains and joys of her daily life.
With the bracing candour, vulnerability and authority that include made her one of the most admired voices of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen.
“Living in my body has expanded my empathy for other people and the truth of their bodies. Certa Early in my writing career, I had this concept for a book, nonfiction. The title? LIVING IN THE BODY. I shared the idea with a friend…it’s been years, I don’t remember details. But the friend replied with a frown and a question…What did I mean? What would I be trying to say? If I needed to think the concept through, I did understand more studying Anatomy and Physiology. But the group of words was still there…something I needed to explore. Why? Maybe because I’m human; maybe because it became more obvious when I was in nursing educational facility. I had always honored my body, the miracle of the five senses, the amazing process of eating to maintain being, all the organs that provide LIVE ITSELF: beating hearts; brains that manual our choices; senses that help us navigate the world. Where would we be without smell, sight, hearing, taste, touch? Our bodies, no matter their shape and form, carry us through life. If they become or are defective, we learn to cope. With the help of modern medicine, people with damage to their somatic senses can still navigate the world. But what will your future be, if at a young age, say twelve, someone, or maybe more than Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay My rating: 4 of 5 stars Content warnings for rape and body issues, both of which are presented in a straightforward but not euphemistic manner from the point of view of the person going through them. This was a difficult book to obtain through because it is not comfortable (see content warnings above) but if you are ready to be uncomfortable, this is a book that can crack you open emotionally. How the reader fills in the cracks is up to them; part of the goal of this text is to force us literarily through that same process that Gay went through herself. This was a deeply visceral experience, both in the smooth, straightforward writing, and the reading of the text by the author in the audiobook edition. I’ve enjoyed Roxane Gay’s other work, and I follow her on Twitter, so I had some notion of what I was in for. This volume is much less tongue-in-cheek and much more personal than Bad Feminist was. It is a great example of deeply affective writing that is deceptive in its perceived simplicity. It’s NOT plain in any way, shape, or form. This compassionate of writing comes from deep familiarity with both the form and function of IndieBound, Powell’s Capital of Books, iBooks, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon It turns out that when a wrenching past is confronted with wisdom and bravery, the outcome can be compassion and enlightenment—both for the reader who has lived through this kind of unimaginable pain and for the reader who knows nothing of it. Roxane Gay shows us how to be decent to ourselves, and decent to one another. HUNGER is an astounding achievement in more ways than I can count. At its simplest, it’s a memoir about existence fat — Gay’s preferred term — in a hostile, fat-phobic world. At its most symphonic, it’s an intellectually rigorous and deeply moving exploration of the ways in which trauma, stories, desire, language and metaphor shape our experiences and construct our reality. Wrenching, deeply moving. . . a memoir that’s so bold, so raw, it feels as if [Gay]’s entrusting you with her soul Gay turns to memoir in this powerful reflection on her childhood traumas…Timely and resonant, you can be sure that Need will touch a nerve, as so much of Roxane Gay’s writing does. ThiRoxane Gay, Author of HUNGER
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