These days there’s always a book that I’m reading and so after I finish Becoming by Michelle Obama and Love in Colour by Bonu Babalola, Roxane Gay’s Hunger is next on my list. She’s so easy to listen to and learn from and I'm so ashamed that I haven’t yet read any of her work! You see, I’ve been a lazy reader most of my life and I’ve been working on that ever since Spirit whispered that it was time to nurture my writing. I didn’t know where to start but as chance would have it, an advertisement of Roxane Gay’s MasterClass - Writing for Social Change popped up on my YouTube and before I could skip it, I found myself in love with her charm and convinced this opportunity was made just for me. I’m not yet sure why I must tell these stories, but every fibre of my being wants to write about my journey and so here I am stretching and flexing and learning. I’ve navigated 32 years of it so far and acquired such unique experiences as an East African Artist, that I simply must share them with the world. Hunger screams to the universe of our own prejudices and shares a unique story that will make you sad, and will make you angry in all the ways that matter.I’m feeling heavily pregnant with words and as though I’m ready to birth a book about my life. If you are already a fan of Roxane Gay’s writing or enjoy powerfully moving memoirs, I cannot recommend this enough and please don’t let my own experience dissuade you. It’s so important to have books like Hunger out there in the universe to perpetuate change. It’s so easy to get sucked into our own lives that we forget how easy we have things, in regards to so many details – gender, race, class, religion, weight. All in all, it’s a very powerful memoir that reminded me to acknowledge my privileged. She is vulnerable and open regarding the way she is treated and the challenges she has to overcome in order to experience the fullness of life so many of us take for granted. She discusses the events that adjusted that relationship. Roxane talks about her relationship with her body. The only thing that kept me from DNF-ing this was the hope that the next essay would rope me in. And that should be okay, right? But when it’s a well-loved book, and it’s about so potent and important a topic, and when it’s a memoir, it’s difficult to say I didn’t enjoy it. There’s lots of things are right about the book. Her writing style is fine and the points she makes are incredibly important. She tells the same stories in different settings.Īgain, there’s nothing wrong with this. This is bound to happen in a 300 page book that talks about only one topic. Her writing style includes a lot of repetition. Roxane Gay tells her stories in such a way that unapologetically calls out the types of things that cause shame to people like herself (which is good) and describes the ways her body makes her feel like she’s trapped in a cage. And not in that “this makes me uncomfortable, so I dislike it” way. You’re not supposed to love this book, but you are supposed to respect and support it. The stories Roxane Gay shares are intense and difficult to read. In fact, it’s a very raw, honest memoir about a topic that is so deeply personal. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with Hunger. I feel like rubbish when I don’t enjoy a book that everyone else loves.
With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved-in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes. In Hunger, she explores her own past-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. Genres: Biography, Feminism, Memoir, Non-Fiction Published by HarperCollins on June 13, 2017
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay