Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“A memoir that’s so brave, so raw, it feels as if [Gay]’s entrusting you with her soul.” — Seattle Times

“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.” — Ann Patchett

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist : a searingly honest and confessional 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 with body image and mental health 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 and childhood trauma 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 find self-discovery and 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.

This is not a story of triumph. It is the story of a body, a life, and a hunger that demands to be heard.

A Memoir of the Body: Goes beyond a simple weight-loss narrative to explore one woman’s intensely personal and psychological struggle with food, consumption, and health. Unflinching Honesty: With bracing candor, Gay reflects on the devastating act of violence that became a turning point in her life and shaped her relationship with her body for decades. Feminist Cultural Criticism: A vital examination of what it means to be overweight and unseen in a culture obsessed with appearance and conformity. Body Image and Identity: Navigates the profound tension between desire and denial, self-comfort and self-care, and the ongoing journey to feed a hunger that is more than physical.