Synopsis
from Goodreads: From
the bestselling author of Bad
Feminist:
a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning
how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.
“I
ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body
would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds
of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still
there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely
recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.”
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. 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 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.
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.
Stats
for my copy:
Trade paperback, HarperCollins, 2017.
How
acquired:
Via BookCrossing.
First
line:
Every body has a story and a history.
My
thoughts: In
the beginning I found the writing a little repetitive and...youngish?
I don't want to say juvenile, so maybe just short of being
juvenile...the first few chapters. And then after her account of the
rape, it hit me that those first few chapters were almost hesitant,
as if the author wanted to tell us about it but it was a hard thing
to talk about and so she needed to work up to it. And after that it
didn't feel so repetitive or short-of-being-juvenile. It was just
very real. I can't even imagine the courage it took to write this
book.
I
am about thirty pounds overweight. And I will admit that sometimes
when I see a very large or obese person, I think to myself, how did
they let themselves get to that point? But underneath that, what I'm
thinking is I hope I don't ever get to that point, and I'm constantly
reminding myself that I need to exercise more and eat better, and
then I don't. I just hope when I've looked at a very large or obese
person, my look hasn't actually made them feel like I was judging
them.
A
powerful and moving book, and a good example of how cruel people can
be to others who don't fit their definition of perfect.
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