Gay, who rose to literary stardom in 2014 with her cheeky, brilliant bestselling collection of essays, “Bad Feminist,” has written powerfully and often for various publications about gender, race, identity, pop culture and personal politics, but “Hunger” is the first book-length piece of writing that focuses explicitly on her weight. Such is the case for Roxane Gay, whose latest work, “Hunger,” is a memoir of her body and how she has lived in and with it since surviving a horrible act of violence. If you are a woman, of any race, it’s nearly impossible not to internalize this mainstream mantra of emaciation as the end goal, but if preempted and perpetuated by sexual assault, a woman’s body can become the towering embodiment of exquisite pain. Because apart from money, thinness is the country’s most valued and desired currency.
Like the majority of women in America, I think about nearly every piece of food that I put into my mouth.
