Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxanne
Gay
Audiobook: 6 hours
Hardback book: 320
pages
Excellent book. The deep emotional scars that
Roxanne Gay opens and horrific moments in her life brought on by others
inflicting pain and later by Roxanne’s own self-loathing and
self-punishment. Roxanne is of Haitian parentage and
ancestry. She grew up in America born of wealthy Haitian parents
who are academics. She never wanted for anything while home with her
parents, the neighbors were all wealthy professionals whose children were
thought to be good. At 12 years of age, Roxanne fell in love with
one of the “good boys” whose parents were considered society elite.
This good boy who stole Roxanne’s heart turned out to be cruel and sadistic and
through her complete trust and devotion he coerced her into going with him to a
private place in the woods where they could be alone, however, when they
arrived at the place a bunch of his friends were waiting for them.
To her terror she found out her boyfriend set this all up with the other boys
and in cahoots they held her down and gang-raped her. This
horror has affected her ever since though she has tried to come to terms with
it and get past it. In trying to deal with the memories she
began to feel she had somehow brought it on and continued to have a
relationship with the boy. Though all of the boys told others at
school what they had done everyone looked down on Roxanne calling her slut and
worse. She had no friends when she tried to reach out to
other girls they would call her names and humiliate her. She finally begged
her father to send her to Exeter a prestigious private boarding school (and the
most expensive private boarding school in the U.S.) so that she could start
over where no one knew her. Life was tolerable for a while
but she could not rid herself of the shame and began to eat to self-medicate to
try to make the bad feelings and memories go away. She gained
30 lbs. the first year there. When she went home during the
holidays her family freaked. They tried to help her but also they
criticized her and made fun of her for being what they considered so
fat. Their jibes did not stop her food bingeing.
Relationships came and went both male and female and her
weight rose with every new criticism by friend, foe and family.
The more they made her feel bad about her weight the more she ate to make
herself feel calmer. She began to avoid going home and finally
stopped going home all together though her parents continued to support her in
school and for a time on her own until she disappeared because she could not
take their criticisms anymore. She dove into a pit of
perversions with strangers, and taking chances with her life with sordid
characters she met over the internet or on the street. She would do
anything to try to make the awful pain go away but it never did and she began
to feel so low she let others degrade her because she thought it might purge
her of her awfulness. And her weight continued to
rise. Her story is such a brutal one but such an intense look
into the psyche of a highly functioning yet broken human being.
Excellent portrait of bulimia and its underlying causes
and how body image can blind the public to the person. This is the
most honest life story I have ever read. Excellent
book.
