A review by clem
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

5.0

Roxane Gay is such a good writer - accessible and clear without sacrificing any of her intelligence. There are so many insights here about what it means to be fat - particularly enlightening to me was her description of the infrastructure that makes so much of the world inaccessible. Her weight is tied up in her rape at age twelve, and the book deals with both of those things and how they inform each other. The title is interesting - its relevance to the subject matter is pretty immediately obvious, but there are so many layers to her hunger. She hungers for love, (self-)acceptance, closure. The most profoundly moving element of this book is the lack of a tidy ending, the idea that working through trauma is a lifelong process.