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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
TWs: Sexual Assault, eating disorders, fatphobia
Roxane Gay warns early in her memoir -- this is not a book about weight loss. ‘Hunger’ is more necessary than any healthy eating guide, or weight loss story you’ll ever read.
Gay fearlessly reveals the truth of being fat woman, and in her case, what doctors classify as “morbidly obese.” She displays many of the heart-wrenching ways the world has been constructed to work against her. This book describes the disturbing sexual assault incident that led her to find comfort and safety in a bigger body; this trauma would eventually lead to serious disordered eating.
I walked away from this book with more awareness and disdain for how our world fails to accommodate fat people, and refuses to listen to those that don’t have “normal bodies.” Gay shows us the ugly truth about being a member of society that is so relentlessly silenced. This book made me angry at myself for falling into the trap of fatphobia that our society creates.
Of course, we also get to hear about Gay’s personal and professional triumphs in the face of discrimnation and hatred. Though there’s nothing light about this story, it was still inspiring. In my opinion, this is a necessary read in order to inch closer to a world without fatphobia.
Roxane Gay warns early in her memoir -- this is not a book about weight loss. ‘Hunger’ is more necessary than any healthy eating guide, or weight loss story you’ll ever read.
Gay fearlessly reveals the truth of being fat woman, and in her case, what doctors classify as “morbidly obese.” She displays many of the heart-wrenching ways the world has been constructed to work against her. This book describes the disturbing sexual assault incident that led her to find comfort and safety in a bigger body; this trauma would eventually lead to serious disordered eating.
I walked away from this book with more awareness and disdain for how our world fails to accommodate fat people, and refuses to listen to those that don’t have “normal bodies.” Gay shows us the ugly truth about being a member of society that is so relentlessly silenced. This book made me angry at myself for falling into the trap of fatphobia that our society creates.
Of course, we also get to hear about Gay’s personal and professional triumphs in the face of discrimnation and hatred. Though there’s nothing light about this story, it was still inspiring. In my opinion, this is a necessary read in order to inch closer to a world without fatphobia.
I was really excited for this and not because it's an amazing story or funny or anything like that but because I knew I could learn a lot and get insights into things I never thought about before.
I loved Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist and since then I knew she had dealt with sexual abuse and obesity and problems resulting from that. Especially the chapters dealing with her abuse (rape but also emotional abuse) are hard to read and if you get triggered easily by these topics it might not be the right thing for you. Eating disorders are also mentioned quite heavily.
They are good though in a way that they raise awareness and make me understand better what her life is like. The same goes for everything she writes about being fat and having society judge her for that. There are some things (like the dimensions of literally every space ever) that I never thought about because I'm in such a different situation and I'm really glad I could learn about these things.
Awareness is important.
This book is not a guide to anything but it offers so much insight and quite a lot of really interesting and really important thoughts. I think this is a great read, especially for those who want to know more about diverse bodies and all the things mentioned above.
Just maybe do it like I did and read something fun in between.
I loved Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist and since then I knew she had dealt with sexual abuse and obesity and problems resulting from that. Especially the chapters dealing with her abuse (rape but also emotional abuse) are hard to read and if you get triggered easily by these topics it might not be the right thing for you. Eating disorders are also mentioned quite heavily.
They are good though in a way that they raise awareness and make me understand better what her life is like. The same goes for everything she writes about being fat and having society judge her for that. There are some things (like the dimensions of literally every space ever) that I never thought about because I'm in such a different situation and I'm really glad I could learn about these things.
Awareness is important.
This book is not a guide to anything but it offers so much insight and quite a lot of really interesting and really important thoughts. I think this is a great read, especially for those who want to know more about diverse bodies and all the things mentioned above.
Just maybe do it like I did and read something fun in between.
I've known the snippets of her story she's shared in her essays and in Bad Feminist, but I'm glad she gave voice to her full story about her day to day struggles and the history/mental states that got her here. Despite not having such an unruly body, I've always believed it to be, and shared *exact* understanding and empathy around the many mind-traps she described. This book will help people, both those that understand and those that need to.
I don't feel right rating this one, but Roxane Gay is amazing.
challenging
emotional
informative
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
Often I read for pleasure and entertainment, and occasionally I read to enrich my understanding of a particular topic or another person's perspective (a reader lives a thousand lives). I don't think I've ever read a more intimate and uncensored view into someone's thoughts before.
Roxane Gay is a name that has been lauded in various articles and recommendations, and now I finally understand why. This is her brutally honest account of her life and how her obesity affects every part of it.
Roxane Gay is a name that has been lauded in various articles and recommendations, and now I finally understand why. This is her brutally honest account of her life and how her obesity affects every part of it.
Extremely moving and challenging to read. Thank you Roxane for sharing your truth
Hunger
Hunger is Roxane Gay’s most recent work—a series of essays of varying lengths about food, her body, and hunger—for what she can and can’t have. Unlike Bad Feminist, Gay reads Hunger herself—an addition that made the audiobook more powerful than the text alone and why I went ahead and used the Audible credit. This is a book I think I will need to revisit a few times to really experience Gay’s writing and argument, largely because of the power and nuance here. I don’t want to assume I got everything out of this book the first time.
I loved Gay’s Bad Feminist so I knew I enjoyed her voice and writing. From Bad Feminist, I knew she had been raped and that had likely contributed to her current weight—a weight she clearly labels in Hunger as morbid obesity per the medical profession. Hunger made me feel conflicted—as a feminist with friends of all shapes and body types and with histories of disordered eating, I try my hardest not to judge people by their sizes. As someone who works with people who are involuntarily institutionalized, very little drives me as crazy as fighting with ten people trying to put my client on a diet she doesn’t want “for her health” while all of them are also as big as she is. I recognize marketing to women’s insecurities over their sizes while at the same time buying it—like knowing candy is bad and buying it anyway, I feel the pull of weight-shame marketing. Like Gay, I too was sucked into the myth of The Biggest Loser and wanted it all to be real. If I’m honest, I make snap judgments about people I don’t know while at the same time trying to espouse body-positivity and loving my friends who don’t meet America’s definition of “skinny.” (Full disclosure, I have a body type that many would consider “skinny” or “thin,” though I don’t consider myself skinny….thanks weight-shame marketing).
Gay’s set up left me feeling the pull of conflicting conclusions—something it seems Gay is perhaps herself left with. Part of Gay’s weight stems, as I noted above, from her rape. She wasn’t overweight and then she was literally gang-raped as a tween (I wouldn’t call it graphic but all the trigger warnings for this section). And then she became big—so big that maybe this flesh would become a fortress that would give her back the sense of safety she lost as a child. On the one hand she clearly recognizes that her weight was and remains to an extent, a holdover from her trauma. That when she starts to lose weight as she has several times, there reaches a point where she can’t be smaller, where the loss no longer feels safe and so she self-sabotages and gains the weight back. She acknowledges this and yet she also argues that her weight should not be viewed as a problem.
It is hard to reconcile Gay’s arguments that people should accept and accommodate her body because it is what it is and others have no right to judge it with her acknowledging that her size stems from a problem, from her trauma—a trauma that doesn’t seem like it’s fully healed (if it can be). And yet—perhaps this is the point. The sense of conflict comes from the tug of wanting to judge Gay for not addressing the source of her weight—if she did she could finally be thinner!—while at the same time knowing how hard that is in my own life. This pull to judge and not to judge ultimately leaves me with only one conclusion—Gay’s weight isn’t my problem. The person next to me on the airplane’s weight isn’t my problem. Whether they can help their size or not, whether choices have been made that led them here or not—they are not my problem. Indeed, it isn’t even my problem whether they think their weight is or isn’t a problem. Gay knows she has trauma. How she chooses to address it is up to her—and since her trauma isn’t affecting me, it isn’t on me to judge how she chooses to wear her flesh or, even, how her body makes choices for her.
For a purely practical takeaway, I had honestly never before paid attention to how the world is set up against larger people. Even with a boyfriend that tops six feet and two hundred pounds, I have had the thin-privilege of never paying attention to it. It never occurred me to that chairs with arms would be painful and turn dining from a pleasant meal with friends into a torturous evening that results in bruises. While my work has trained me to see more accessibility issues than I did before, I don’t really see weight as a disability and so I wouldn’t see a one-foot step onto a stage to be an issue for someone without a disability-related mobility impairment. I have been blind to the ways the world is set up against people who are large, to ensure the comfort of the thin and punish (yes—punish) those who aren’t. If I remember nothing else from this book several months from now, I hope that I can remember the sense of shame I felt for being blind to this. That I can keep my eyes open to ensure that those around me who are larger are still able to be comfortable in the places we chose to eat or spend time.
Hunger is a bit of a difficult read—not for the writing which is Gay’s usual excellent work—but for the topics. And yet, it is one that I do think is a must-listen, especially for those of us who navigate the world without thinking about our thin-privilege.
If you enjoyed this review, check out more at http://lisaannreads.com
Hunger is Roxane Gay’s most recent work—a series of essays of varying lengths about food, her body, and hunger—for what she can and can’t have. Unlike Bad Feminist, Gay reads Hunger herself—an addition that made the audiobook more powerful than the text alone and why I went ahead and used the Audible credit. This is a book I think I will need to revisit a few times to really experience Gay’s writing and argument, largely because of the power and nuance here. I don’t want to assume I got everything out of this book the first time.
I loved Gay’s Bad Feminist so I knew I enjoyed her voice and writing. From Bad Feminist, I knew she had been raped and that had likely contributed to her current weight—a weight she clearly labels in Hunger as morbid obesity per the medical profession. Hunger made me feel conflicted—as a feminist with friends of all shapes and body types and with histories of disordered eating, I try my hardest not to judge people by their sizes. As someone who works with people who are involuntarily institutionalized, very little drives me as crazy as fighting with ten people trying to put my client on a diet she doesn’t want “for her health” while all of them are also as big as she is. I recognize marketing to women’s insecurities over their sizes while at the same time buying it—like knowing candy is bad and buying it anyway, I feel the pull of weight-shame marketing. Like Gay, I too was sucked into the myth of The Biggest Loser and wanted it all to be real. If I’m honest, I make snap judgments about people I don’t know while at the same time trying to espouse body-positivity and loving my friends who don’t meet America’s definition of “skinny.” (Full disclosure, I have a body type that many would consider “skinny” or “thin,” though I don’t consider myself skinny….thanks weight-shame marketing).
Gay’s set up left me feeling the pull of conflicting conclusions—something it seems Gay is perhaps herself left with. Part of Gay’s weight stems, as I noted above, from her rape. She wasn’t overweight and then she was literally gang-raped as a tween (I wouldn’t call it graphic but all the trigger warnings for this section). And then she became big—so big that maybe this flesh would become a fortress that would give her back the sense of safety she lost as a child. On the one hand she clearly recognizes that her weight was and remains to an extent, a holdover from her trauma. That when she starts to lose weight as she has several times, there reaches a point where she can’t be smaller, where the loss no longer feels safe and so she self-sabotages and gains the weight back. She acknowledges this and yet she also argues that her weight should not be viewed as a problem.
It is hard to reconcile Gay’s arguments that people should accept and accommodate her body because it is what it is and others have no right to judge it with her acknowledging that her size stems from a problem, from her trauma—a trauma that doesn’t seem like it’s fully healed (if it can be). And yet—perhaps this is the point. The sense of conflict comes from the tug of wanting to judge Gay for not addressing the source of her weight—if she did she could finally be thinner!—while at the same time knowing how hard that is in my own life. This pull to judge and not to judge ultimately leaves me with only one conclusion—Gay’s weight isn’t my problem. The person next to me on the airplane’s weight isn’t my problem. Whether they can help their size or not, whether choices have been made that led them here or not—they are not my problem. Indeed, it isn’t even my problem whether they think their weight is or isn’t a problem. Gay knows she has trauma. How she chooses to address it is up to her—and since her trauma isn’t affecting me, it isn’t on me to judge how she chooses to wear her flesh or, even, how her body makes choices for her.
For a purely practical takeaway, I had honestly never before paid attention to how the world is set up against larger people. Even with a boyfriend that tops six feet and two hundred pounds, I have had the thin-privilege of never paying attention to it. It never occurred me to that chairs with arms would be painful and turn dining from a pleasant meal with friends into a torturous evening that results in bruises. While my work has trained me to see more accessibility issues than I did before, I don’t really see weight as a disability and so I wouldn’t see a one-foot step onto a stage to be an issue for someone without a disability-related mobility impairment. I have been blind to the ways the world is set up against people who are large, to ensure the comfort of the thin and punish (yes—punish) those who aren’t. If I remember nothing else from this book several months from now, I hope that I can remember the sense of shame I felt for being blind to this. That I can keep my eyes open to ensure that those around me who are larger are still able to be comfortable in the places we chose to eat or spend time.
Hunger is a bit of a difficult read—not for the writing which is Gay’s usual excellent work—but for the topics. And yet, it is one that I do think is a must-listen, especially for those of us who navigate the world without thinking about our thin-privilege.
If you enjoyed this review, check out more at http://lisaannreads.com
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced