Hunger cover art

Hunger

A Memoir of (My) Body

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Hunger

By: Roxane Gay
Narrated by: Roxane Gay
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About this listen

'I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere.... I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.'

New York Times best-selling 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. 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.

In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and 20s - including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life - and brings listeners into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.

With the bracing candour, 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. 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.

©2017 Roxane Gay (P)2017 Little Brown Book Group
Body Positivity Caribbean Creators Essays Mental Health Awareness Social Sciences Women Memoir Nonfiction Heartfelt Thought-Provoking Inspiring Health

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All stars
Most relevant
This is an excellent, challenging read, which forces you to think about the assumptions you make about people. Brutally honest.

Essential reading

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Just a little worming that this book contains details of eating disorder behaviour and numbers. I didn't expext that and wished there had been a trigger warning somewhere first.

Roxans story isn't unual in many ways, most of what she writes about is what lots of fat people explain daily, but as a Black, Queer woman her situation is more extreme and I think those conversations are really important. However, she didn't read with much connection, perhaps the topics were just hard to connect to so she couldn't.

Over all its an interesting book but not one I absolutely loved.

Tough going but honest

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Roxane Gay's deeply moving, hard-hitting biographical account of rape and its consequences is harrowing and triggering. The profound impact it had on her life goes to explain all her decision making as a result. Not to explain away her feelings of her weight, but it shows a small tenet of how trauma can have such devastating results. It can be a little repetitive from a literary perspective but it's well worth all the kudos.

Extremely brave account of weight and trauma

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life changing. totally made me want to write again. Didn't want it to finish .

AWESOMENESS

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I started out fully expecting to be engaged and challenged by this memoir but found myself becoming bored by the repetitive focus on the trials of living as a very overweight person who seemingly has no control over the ‘unruly body’. Unlike many life changing conditions obesity is something that can be remedied and overcome. The childhood trauma which caused the author to overeat is truly appalling but can’t be a lifelong justification for living with a body she clearly hates, and seems to feel powerless to change. The catalogue of humiliations she endures because of her size becomes the focus of the book and I can’t help feeling that too much is left out.

Repetitive

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