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But Difficult Women was always going to come out in January 2017. June 2016 came around and I was like, well, it’s not gonna happen. The book became delayed because I just dragged my feet and procrastinated and procrastinated and didn’t write the book. I was actually very resistant to it for a long time. I never really planned on writing memoir. Why was it scary to write this particular memoir about your life? You’ve described the writing process for Hunger as very scary or difficult. It was originally anticipated last year and Difficult Women came out instead earlier this year. Here, Gay discusses the difficulty of in finally writing Hunger, why her new memoir is not a story of triumph, making herself vulnerable to the public and why she doesn’t believe her literary honesty makes her brave. Gay says she didn’t begin to truly confront her past until she was in her thirties. In order to survive, we fit ourselves into the world because the world rarely sees or adapts to survivors.īut gaining weight and developing a difficult relationship to food never truly addressed the underlying trauma. Reclaiming one’s own body, in whatever way that may manifest, is a response to the initial and the reoccurring trauma of assault. Sexual assault is not about sex, but about power. This desire to regain control of one’s own limbs after a traumatic incident. I also thought boys don’t like fat girls.” “I definitely thought, if I’m bigger, I’ll be safer because I’ll be able to fight those boys better. It’s an intensely honest book, and there are many passages that are tough to read, but I think it’s a profoundly important narrative, and a perspective that was missing – conspicuously absent on reflection – in our world.For Gay, trauma manifested in a deliberate manipulation and transformation of her own body into a size she once believed would deter the lasciviousness of predatory young men. The writing sometimes feels repetitious, but it reflects the near-constant frustrations, negative messaging, and indignity that she lives with in a world both fixated on evaluating, monitoring and reporting on her body, while also refusing to accommodate her. Eating therefore becomes a way for Roxane to feel safe. She is unable to say anything to her family, and processes this trauma on her own. Then at age 12, she is the victim of a sickening, monstrous rape, which destroys any sense of security she once had, while also bringing her overwhelming, life-long shame. Her weight gain hinges on a before and after before, she had a trouble-free childhood playing with her brothers and feeling deeply loved and safe with her family.
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Even her father – who would clearly do anything to support her –naively says things like “I am only telling you what no one else will,” when what he says is what the world tells her – forcefully and contemptuously – every day.Įating for Roxane is something of a coping mechanism, which seems to have tipped into a blurred act of compulsion, too. Many of the aspects of her daily experiences should (and do) provoke empathy, not pity. Unlike most personal stories about weight, this is not a ‘triumph’ narrative about her losing weight or conquering her ‘unruly’ body.Īs a super obese woman (someone with a BMI of 50 or more), Gay details the daily intrusions and humiliating ordeals that she endures from shopping for food (strangers being so brazen as to remove items from her shopping cart), clothes (where options are incredibly limited), boarding a plane (and dealing with non-compatible belt extenders and casual cruelty from other passengers or attendants), going to a restaurant (where careful investigations need to happen in advance to determine whether chairs have fixed armrests), walking down the street (where her body is treated like a public space itself – highly visible but invisible – bumped into, stepped on, shoved aside), even going to the doctor’s office (where she deals with condescension and dehumanization). Hunger is partly what it’s like to be overweight in a fat-phobic world, but more than that, it’s a memoir of Roxane Gay’s specific experience, what her body has gone through, and she’s not speaking for anyone but herself.