This also isn't a book of wallowing, despite how intense and painful it can be. These are all other aspects on which I think anyone can empathize, because it's a rare person who is completely fulfilled and can't connect with some aspect of hungering for something they don't have. Yes, this is judgey of me, and I am coming out and admitting it, because Gay admits so much in her memoir that I feel like the least I can do in a review is come out with the same honesty.īut Gay's story isn't just about a physical hunger for food it's about hungering for so many more things, like company and love and security. At the same time, though, I can't bring myself to wholeheartedly jump onto the body positivity train, because at some point being overweight does lead to health problems, and I don't think "healthy at any size" is really a thing when someone can't walk a mile with their friends without having to worry about breathing problems or a heart attack. I've become much better at recognizing these reactions, walking them back, and using logic to guide my thoughts and actions instead, but it's hard to buck what is essentially a lifetime of conditioning that fat equals bad. I do make snap judgments about their character. The other way that Gay's memoir connected with me was giving me a terrible feeling of guilt because, like a lot of society, I have a knee-jerk reaction when I see someone who is very overweight. I mean, I might want to weigh ten pounds less, even though my weight is perfectly healthy, but I'd also much rather spend my time reading books than going to the gym. In that way, Gay's memoir is easy to empathize with even for someone who isn't overweight, because many of us can tap into the fears of being so-we want to be young and pretty and skinny and fit, but life doesn't always work out that way. And why is that? Because I know the thing that Gay hammers home so hard-that our society treats fat people like shit, and I don't want to come even close to falling into that category. I chew my nails over inconsistent sizing at Old Navy because I wear different sizes in different styles of pants, and even though I intellectually know that sizing is bullshit, I still don't want to wear a 6 in one size when I wear a 4 or even a 2 in another. I am one of those skinny girls who sees a little padding on her hips (because you suddenly develop hips in your midtwenties-who knew?) and starts to agonize over it. Gay's memoir is painful to read because of how real it is. Now and adult, she doesn't want to be overweight, but essentially a lifetime of bad habits have made it hard to lose the extra pounds-and then, when she does start to lose weight, the old fears rear their ugly heads again and send her back into bad habits.
Her weight problem stems from childhood trauma-after being gang raped at the age of twelve, she began eating in an attempt to make herself overweight and repulsive to men because she didn't want to be hurt again.
At her heaviest, she weighed close to six hundred pounds, and while she's significantly below that now, she's still considered super morbidly obese. Gay's memoir is, essentially, about being fat. Hunger is up for a Goodreads award, I had it from Book of the Month, and a coworker had read it it and recommended it, and so this confluence of events led me to read it.