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Hunger by Roxane Gay
Genre: Non-Fiction Memoir | 306 Pages | Published: 6.13.17 by HarperCollins
Book Jacket Synopsis:
From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.
“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.”
In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, 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 explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.
With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.
Book Links: Amazon
Review & Thoughts
If you’ve never heard of Roxane Gay before, now you have. Her story is traumatic but so important to read. Although it was a heavy topic, I enjoyed listening to the audiobook that was narrated by the author herself.
Roxane Gay went through such a terrible situation and it was shocking to hear both what happened to her and how it led to her tremendous weight gain. I was literally shocked when I heard how much she weighed and saddened to hear about the struggles and the foundation of the coping mechanism that went along with her weight gain.
Absolutely heartbreaking at the cruel and disgusting things people do to other people, with no regard for their personal being or experience. I hope that reading stories such as this will get through to the humanity in the terrible people that commit such heinous acts and perhaps offer comfort to those that have personally been through terrible traumatic events.
Recommend for: fans of non-fiction, memoirs, authentic stories about real-life trauma | My Review Rating: ♥♥♥♥.5
Book Format & Source: Audiobook via the free Libby app
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