Roxane Gay, Author of HUNGER

Early in my writing career, I had this idea for a book, nonfiction. The title? LIVING IN THE BODY.

I shared the idea with a friend…it’s been years, I don’t remember details. But the friend replied with a frown and a question…What did I mean? What would I be trying to say?

If I needed to think the idea through, I did learn more studying Anatomy and Physiology. But the phrase was still there…something I needed to explore. Why? Maybe because I’m human; maybe because it became more obvious when I was in nursing school. I had always honored my body, the miracle of the five senses, the amazing process of eating to maintain life, all the organs that provide LIVE ITSELF: beating hearts; brains that guide our choices; senses that help us navigate the world. Where would we be without smell, sight, hearing, taste, touch? Our bodies, no matter their shape and form, carry us through life. If they become or are defective, we learn to cope. With the help of modern medicine, people with damage to their somatic senses can still navigate the world. But what will your future be, if at a young age, say twelve, someone, or maybe more than one someone, decided to hinder your ability to LIVE IN YOUR BODY?

Author and thinker ROXANE GAY explores this question in her book HUNGER. Some of you might know of Gay, and her work: a Black woman, a feminist with unending writing skills, author of HUNGER, BAD FEMINIST, DIFFICULT WOMEN; contributor to literary magazines, the New York Times and many more.

HUNGER 

The engine of Gay’s memoir occurred years ago. She writes:”Every body has a story and a history. Here I offer mine with a memoir of my body and my hunger…This is not a wight-loss memoir. There will be no picture of a thin version of me…Mine is not a success story. Mine is, simply a true story.”

Gay also writes that she wishes the book were a triumphant weight loss story…how she learned to live more effectively with her demons. But it is not. She tells us: “Instead I have written this book, which has been the most difficult writing experience of my life…And what could be easier to write about than the body I have lived in for more than forty years? But soon I realized…I was forcing myself to look at what my body had endured, the weight I gained, and how hard it has been to both live with and lose that weight. I’ve been forced to look at my guiltiest secrets. I’ve cut myself wide open. I am exposed. This is not comfortable. That is not easy.”

Because HUNGER is the story of how Gay’s life changed when at the age of twelve “something terrible happened.” She had a boyfriend. What happened because of that boyfriend was a secret she kept for 25 years. She writes: “In my history of violence there was a boy. I loved him…I was raped by him and several of his friends in an abandoned hunting cabin in the woods where no one but those boys could hear me scream.”

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL 

As mothers, females, reading the details…there were so many signs that Roxane should have stayed far away from this boy. But what does a twelve-year-old know about such signs? And when it was over, she writes that “she pushed her bike home and pretended to be the daughter my parents know, the good girl, the straight-A student.” She never told her parents.

A CAUTIONARY TALE

HUNGER is the story of recovery, but Gay’s own particular way of recovering and healing. For years there isn’t a therapist, there is just Gay eating her body into a different shape, because as she writes, she was treated like nothing and thus she became nothing. But she could write. She had talent, always knew that was her particular skill. “I OFTEN SAY THAT READING AND WRITING SAVED MY LIFE. I MEAN THAT QUITE LITERALLY.”

THE MANY STEPS TO HEALING

Roxane Gay never told her parents. In high school, her English teacher recognized her writing skill, but he also saw that she needed help, and walked her over to the campus counseling center. But as time passed, she wrote: “The medical community is not particularly interested in taking the pain of a woman seriously.” She did discover she could forget about herself and her hurt, by working behind the scene in the theater department. “I could be part of something without anyone in a show’s audience knowing I was part of something.”

Gay’s parents sent her to a weight-loss camp in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. There she learned how to smoke, increasing that “hunger” to be cool. Between her weight and the attack on her lungs, which ached when she climbed the stairs, Gay felt such sacrifices were worth “becoming cool.” Thus, she continued to keep her pain from her parents, but also pleased them by getting good grades. She writes that whenever she needed help, her parents were always there for her. But though Gay tried diets, exercise, she could never lose the weight, and much of the book is about that acceptance and discovery. Roxane Gay slowly grew to accept the body she had created. She learned to live with it and honor it. Yes! LIVING IN THE BODY.

AMERICAN CULTURE

Gay writes about being dangerously over-weight and how that changes your ability to live in society. Can she fit into an ambulance? Where can she find clothing? How will she tolerate the looks and sneers of those around her? Why is being thin always equated with happiness? ANSWER: because that’s how our culture sees us. Gay writes: What does it say about our culture that the desire for weight loss is considered a default feature of womanhood?

She writes about Oprah, her weight-loss struggle, quotes the queen of Women’s TV: “Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be.”

Gay’s response (she had a sense of humor!) “I ate that thin woman and she was delicious, but unsatisfying.” Gay analyzes celebrities writing: “They pose for selfies with their cheeks sucked in to make themselves even gaunter. The less space they take up, the more they matter.” She writes that being out in the public, on a plane for example, is always a challenge. “People like me don’t get to eat food like chips in public.”

Gay eventually found that working out helped her deal with living in the body. “When I’m at the gym, I want to be left alone in my sweaty misery. I want to disappear until my body is no longer a spectacle. I can’t disappear…if I allowed myself to lose control, I would let loose so much rage.”

HOW STRANGERS TREAT HER  

“I am shoved in public spaces…as if I deserve pain, punishment for being fat. …I am highly visible, but I am regularly treated like I am invisible. My body receives no respect or consideration or care in public spaces. My body is treated LIKE a public space.”

Yes, Gay with her brain, her determination is creating a life. She has had lovers, relationships, excellent teaching and writing jobs. She writes that she has worked to change some of her patterns, realizing she has much to offer, that she is funny, a good cook, and deserves much more than mediocrity. “I often tell my students that fiction is about desire in one way or another. The older I get, the more I understand that life is generally the pursuit of desires. We want and want and oh, how we want. We hunger.”

FINAL THOUGHT  Gay writes:

I am never allowed to forget the realities of my body, how my body offends the sensibilities of others, how my body dares to take up too much space and how I dare to be confident, how I dare to use my voice, how I dare to believe in the value of my voice both in spite and because of my body.

The more successful I get, the more I am reminded that in the minds of a great many people, I will never be anything more than my body. No matter what I accomplish, I will be fat, first and foremost.   

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us

Save