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Hunger

On sale

6th July 2017

Price: £13.99

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Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781472151117

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‘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 bestselling 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 twenties-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.

With the bracing candor, 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.

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Reviews

Booklist, starred review
In 88 short, lucid chapters, Gay powerfully takes readers through realities that pain her, vex her, guide her, and inform her work. The result is a generous and empathic consideration of what it's like to be someone else: in itself something of a miracle.
Ann Patchett
It turns out that when a wrenching past is confronted with wisdom and bravery, the outcome can be compassion and enlightenment - both for the reader who has lived through this kind of unimaginable pain, and for the reader who knows nothing of it. Roxane Gay shows us how to be decent to ourselves, and decent to one another. HUNGER is an amazing achievement in more ways than I can count.
Kirkus, starred review
A heart-rending debut memoir from the outspoken feminist and essayist . . . An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath.
the Observer
Extraordinary . . . [a] courageous, honest book . . . One of the triumphs of the book is that she not only makes one consider the way fatness is judged, she implies a larger question about the impertinence of judging others at all.
Independent
One of the most eagerly anticipated books of the year . . . it's "not a weight-loss memoir" - but it's actually something far more inspirational than that . . . the tender beauty of this memoir - testament to her bravery and resilience - has much to teach us about kindness and compassion.
the Scotsman
Luminous . . . profound . . . an intellectually rigorous and deeply moving exploration of the ways in which trauma, stories, desire, language and metaphor shape our experiences and construct our reality . . . With this book, she reclaims the body, reclaims the right to be seen and heard for who she (really) is.
TLS, Books of the Year
I have reviewed many interesting books for the TLS this year, but the most moving is Roxane Gay's Hunger . . . Her survivor's story is both understated and inspiring.
Porochista Khakpour, Buzzfeed
I'm very thankful for Roxane Gay's Hunger, which should be and should have been on every award list if people were really reading. This is her best book, in my opinion. I love that it takes an unconventional road to storytelling and that the structure often spirals within itself in interesting ways. I also love that it is a story about sexual assault and the ways in which that can change your life. It's a deeply moving, somewhat experimental, gorgeously written and brilliantly thought-out memoir. And it's one of those books that no matter what your relationship to the body, this book is for you, all of you.
Guardian Best Biography and Autobiography Books of 2017
This whip-smart book takes on everything