She doesn’t shy away from sharing moments of pure pain and hurt that she experienced in a way that has never been done before. She claims the bigger her body got, the more invisible yet safe she felt. She talks about wanting to make her body bigger and bigger so no man could harm her. Roxane Gay traces the journey of her body as she makes it a fortress, that protects her and becomes her. She calls her body “ unruly” and explores how a patriarchal society wants to contain, dominate, and train her body. She does not only speak about physical hunger but about hunger for love, respect, safety, intimacy, and even justice. Divided into two parts, pre and post-sexual assault, Roxane Gay does not only talk about the politics of fatness, but talks about embodiment and the significance of a woman’s physical body especially when it has been violated. Roxane Gay in her book creates revolution through raw vulnerability. And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear, but it’s something that needs to be said, loudly, over and over again, so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us.”Īlso read: Reflections On Being A Fat Woman: My Body As The Site Of Moral Panic We should be seen and not heard, and if we are seen, we should be pleasing to men, acceptable to society. “This is what most girls are taught – that we should be slender and small. If you identify with an ideology based on the visibility of women, how do you deal with consequences of breaking these patriarchal expectations? This is what Roxane Gay explores in her book Hunger: A Memoir of My Body We are supposed to be thin but not too thin, polite but not boring, talkative yet not too talkative, visible yet not more visible than men. Our society poses numerous expectation on women, one of them being the constant modification of our physical bodies in order to match up to unattainable beauty standards.

Hunger a memoir of my body review