On bad days, though, I forget how to separate my personality, the heart of who I am, from my body.” How do you stay encouraged on such bad days? What is your view on staying motivated for a person who is in constant want of validations that accompany weight loss from others? Question: In chapter 41, you said, “On better days, when I feel up to the fight, I want to change how this world responds to how I look because, intellectually, I know my body is not the real problem. In answering questions from an Our Shared Shelf discussion, one question struck me as important to mention in this post: She told Amoruso, “The things that challenge me the most are the most intellectually satisfying.” When they spoke about her book and body image, she said it was possible to be happy with your body and to do that you have to be kind and gentle with your body.
When she decided to write Hunger, she had told herself that writing about her body was the one thing she wanted to write about the least. Gay has been a writer since she was about 4 years old, as well as being an avid reader. Her interview with Sophia Amoruso gave me more of an understanding of the book after I read it. The first time I heard about Hunger, and Roxane Gay for that matter, was listing to the relaunch of Girlboss Radio. As someone who has been sexually assaulted and raped, I understand how she wanted to protect her body from being hurt again and yet it is constantly hurt until we learn to accept who we are and who we have become. It is also one of the many that have spoken to me. Hunger became part of the list last year for the months of September and October. I have read many of the books that have been part of the reading list. When it first started, I jumped on board as I was fairly new to the whole feminist thing.
Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and tells a story that hasn't yet been told but needs to be.In 2016, Emma Watson started the feminist book club, Our Shared Shelf. With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and authority that have 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. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twentiesincluding the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young lifeand brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. 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. New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe." I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble.
"I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe.