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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Hooooollly this was amazing. An incredible book and an incredible audiobook. Gay's voice is gorgeous and throaty and perfectly inflects both the humor and deep wanting of this memoir.
Hunger is a stunningly honest book written by an incredible writer who turns her own story, and her body's story, into something powerful and compelling. The personal honesty gives insight that rejects judgment, comparison, and apathy. I feel truly changed after reading Hunger and hope others will find it as moving.
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Brilliant and brave with raw and honest insight. The author documents her history or trauma and how it intersects with her relationship to food and her body. She refers to her obesity as "an unruly" body. An interesting term. She is often hard on herself and reductive. "I was broken and then i broke some more and I am not yet healed but I have started believing I will be." "There is a price to be paid for visibility and there is even more of a price to be paid when you are hypervisible." This is a story of endurance of both body and spirit and one crafted with bravery.
I thought this book’s premise was interesting: Let’s talk about obesity as a mental disorder. Admittedly I thought this was going to be the exact opposite: one anorexic’s struggle with food. I’m glad that it wasn’t. It was really eye-opening to get an account of the everyday, casual mistreatment of fat people.
The descriptions of incidents in airports and aeroplanes was heartbreaking, not least because I too have probably done some of the terrible visual cues they see and made someone more miserable as a result. She called it and hopefully in doing so will draw attention to the fact that people do this and they shouldn’t. The message is: don’t be an asshole. It’s really hard being fat so give us a break.
But (and I accept that this won’t be a popular opinion)
...it DID turn into a pity party. Calling your body condition a mental disorder triggered by trauma but also blaming society for not accommodating it more thoroughly is having it both ways. Calling your body ‘unruly’ because you stuff it with food and refuse to exercise is not having an unruly body. If you have untameable hair that responds to no end of loving care, that’s unruly. If you roll in dirt and scrunch your hair in your fists and backcomb it, that’s not having unruly hair. That’s abusing your hair so it looks and becomes unruly. It’s self harm. Although yes it is rooted in trauma. But does this mean all fat people are carrying around some undisclosed trauma? Well maybe.
Like I said I found the psychology fascinating but then repetitive and then my sympathy started to wane. I wondered if I wrote this same memoir but instead of fatness lamented my mistreatment by others as due to my ugly face and blamed all problems on my ugly face but refused to say, smile or wear makeup, or nice clothes and instead sought solace in my ugly face would it not be an act of self pity if I then refused to take ownership and responsibility for my ugly face? Especially if I then blamed society for not catering for my ugly face?
I’m oscillating on whether I thought it was too self pitying, intellectually.
It was very true though which I can’t and don’t want to take away from her. I liked how she irrationally hated thin people. I’ve known this to be true of other fat people. I LOVED the anecdote in the gym where the skinny girl’s contempt drove her to exercise far more than she’d planned much to the skinny girl’s amazement.
I found the account of how the general public and culture and society by extension finding fatness so disgusting very telling and how that translates into how they treat that person. I will endeavour to not be a part of this movement and show kindness. But I did often wonder about labelling fatness, like alcoholism, as a disease or response to trauma. I’m on the fence with this. It opened my eyes a bit but probably not permanently and I think there are bigger fights right now than equality for people who’ve wilfully abuses their bodies yet claim to have no willpower. Maybe more studies into willpower need to happen. And someone should take the very simple step of providing an outlet of nice clothes for the very fat. It’s such a small thing and would mean so much.
The descriptions of incidents in airports and aeroplanes was heartbreaking, not least because I too have probably done some of the terrible visual cues they see and made someone more miserable as a result. She called it and hopefully in doing so will draw attention to the fact that people do this and they shouldn’t. The message is: don’t be an asshole. It’s really hard being fat so give us a break.
But (and I accept that this won’t be a popular opinion)
...it DID turn into a pity party. Calling your body condition a mental disorder triggered by trauma but also blaming society for not accommodating it more thoroughly is having it both ways. Calling your body ‘unruly’ because you stuff it with food and refuse to exercise is not having an unruly body. If you have untameable hair that responds to no end of loving care, that’s unruly. If you roll in dirt and scrunch your hair in your fists and backcomb it, that’s not having unruly hair. That’s abusing your hair so it looks and becomes unruly. It’s self harm. Although yes it is rooted in trauma. But does this mean all fat people are carrying around some undisclosed trauma? Well maybe.
Like I said I found the psychology fascinating but then repetitive and then my sympathy started to wane. I wondered if I wrote this same memoir but instead of fatness lamented my mistreatment by others as due to my ugly face and blamed all problems on my ugly face but refused to say, smile or wear makeup, or nice clothes and instead sought solace in my ugly face would it not be an act of self pity if I then refused to take ownership and responsibility for my ugly face? Especially if I then blamed society for not catering for my ugly face?
I’m oscillating on whether I thought it was too self pitying, intellectually.
It was very true though which I can’t and don’t want to take away from her. I liked how she irrationally hated thin people. I’ve known this to be true of other fat people. I LOVED the anecdote in the gym where the skinny girl’s contempt drove her to exercise far more than she’d planned much to the skinny girl’s amazement.
I found the account of how the general public and culture and society by extension finding fatness so disgusting very telling and how that translates into how they treat that person. I will endeavour to not be a part of this movement and show kindness. But I did often wonder about labelling fatness, like alcoholism, as a disease or response to trauma. I’m on the fence with this. It opened my eyes a bit but probably not permanently and I think there are bigger fights right now than equality for people who’ve wilfully abuses their bodies yet claim to have no willpower. Maybe more studies into willpower need to happen. And someone should take the very simple step of providing an outlet of nice clothes for the very fat. It’s such a small thing and would mean so much.
reflective
sad
slow-paced
amazing brave truths..
She says what we think but do not say..
The emotion is palpable.
thank you for putting pen to paper.
She says what we think but do not say..
The emotion is palpable.
thank you for putting pen to paper.
Brutally honest, beautifully written account of the authors' relationship with her body.