Hunger

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest 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 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 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 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.

Roxane Gay is the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist; the novel An Untamed State, a finalist for the Dayton Peace Prize; the New York Times bestselling memoir Hunger; and the short story collections Difficult Women and Ayiti. A contributing opinion writer to the New York Times, for which she also writes the “Work Friend” column, she has written for Time, McSweeney’s, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, and Oxford American, among many other publications. Her work has also been selected for numerous Best anthologies, including Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018 and Best American Mystery Stories 2014. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. In 2018 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and holds the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University’s Institute for Women’s Leadership.

“A gripping book, with vivid details that linger long after its pages stop. . . . Hunger is arresting and candid. At its best, it affords women, in particular, something so many other accounts deny them—the right to take up space they are entitled to, and to define what that means.” — Atlantic

“A work of staggering honesty . . . . Poignantly told.” — New Republic

“The book’s short, sharp chapters come alive in vivid personal anecdotes. . . . And on nearly every page, Gay’s raw, powerful prose plants a flag, facing down decades of shame and self-loathing by reclaiming the body she never should have had to lose.” — Entertainment Weekly

“Bracingly vivid. . . . Remarkable. . . . Undestroyed, unruly, unfettered, Ms. Gay, live your life. We are all better for having you do so in the same ferociously honest fashion that you have written this book.” — Los Angeles Times

“Searing, smart, readable. . . . “Hunger,” like Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” interrogates the fortunes of black bodies in public spaces. . . .  Nothing seems gratuitous; a lot seems brave. There is an incantatory element of repetition to “Hunger”: The very short chapters scallop over the reader like waves.” — Newsday

“Luminous. . . . intellectually rigorous and deeply moving.” — The New York Times Book Review

“Her spare prose, written with a raw grace, heightens the emotional resonance of her story, making each observation sharper, each revelation more riveting. . . . It is a thing of raw beauty.” — USA Today

“Powerful. . . . fierce. . . . Gay has a vivid, telegraphic writing style, which serves her well. Repetitive and recursive, it propels the reader forward with unstoppable force.” — Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

“This is the book to read this summer . . . she’s such a compelling mind . . . . Anyone who has a body should read this book.” — Isaac Fitzgerald on the TODAY Show

“Unforgettable. . . . Breathtaking. . . . We all need to hear what Gay has to say in these pages. . . . Gay says hers is not a success story because it’s not the weight-loss story our culture demands, but her breaking of her own silence, her movement from shame and self-loathing toward honoring and forgiving and caring for herself, is in itself a profound victory.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“Hunger is Gay at her most lacerating and probing. . . . Anyone familiar with Gay’s books or tweets knows she also wields a dagger-sharp wit.” — Boston Globe

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

“It is a deeply honest witness, often heartbreaking, and always breathtaking. . . . Gay is one of our most vital essayists and critics.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Searing.” — Miami Herald

“This raw and graceful memoir digs deeply into what it means to be comfortable in one’s body. Gay denies that hers is a story of “triumph,” but readers will be hard pressed to find a better word.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A heart-rending debut memoir from the outspoken feminist and essayist. . . . An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Displays bravery, resilience, and naked honesty from the first to last page. . . . Stunning . . . essential reading.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“A work of exceptional courage by a writer of exceptional talent.” — Shelf Awareness (starred review)

Praise for Bad Feminist:“A strikingly fresh cultural critic.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post

“Roxane Gay is the brilliant girl-next-door: your best friend and your sharpest critic. . . . She is by turns provocative, chilling, hilarious; she is also required reading.” — People

“[Gay is] hilarious. But she also confronts more difficult issues of race, sexual assault, body image, and the immigrant experience. She makes herself vulnerable and it’s refreshing.” — Tanvi Misra, Atlantic, "The Best Book I Read This Year"

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