Hunger A Memoir of My Body PDF Free Download

That is my own measly opinion, of course. I think this book left people confused on either end of the spectrum, in different ways. I’ve read 1-star ratings calling it boring, disappointing, circular, with no light at the end of the tunnel; the memoir of a very unlikable human being who gets nowhere in this book.

Like it’s meant to be some kind of fairy tale, or the lesson to be learned is meant to leave the reader feeling accomplished and good. Like wisdom always feels good or something.

Or the 5-star ratings that praise this as though it’s this suspenseful and emotionally captivating read—which I personally feel is misleading and such a misrepresentation of why this book exists.

“LOVE IT!!!” feels cheap. Calling this book amazing feels like a lie.

When I started reading Hunger, I knew I was going into a memoir that was probably going to feel very uncomfortable; both in just reading about the real trauma a real person had experienced, and the fact that I have also suffered trauma. I am also obese and have experienced the fear of losing weight for the same reasons the author has and does. I get it and I felt myself bearing down and then a dull sense of disturbance fill my stomach as I got closer to what I knew lived in the pages of this memoir.

I read a life that seemed very similar to mine; at a certain point I even felt a sting of annoyance that someone wrote down my story and got the success that I probably could’ve had a long time ago. I lived this life, in my own ways—so much of it was terribly familiar to me. Some moments mirrored my own, and some situations I couldn’t even begin to imagine myself in.

I’m wondering if those who got nothing out of this really missed the point of what Roxane’s memoir is. She’s not here to teach us a moral, or to leave us feeling empowered in our obesity, or giving anyone a sense of moral high ground.

This memoir reads as a practice in pure catharsis—an attempt at validating her own traumas and seeing how it latched onto her and changed her perception of herself. It’s not about the reader and really whatever they’re hoping to get out of it; Roxane is showing us the very experiences that closely reflect those similar to her.

Yes, it is redundant because trauma doesn’t just go away. Trauma follows and manifests over and over again, however the brain makes it until the person is able to resolve it. That resolution, though?—sometimes it never shows up. Sometimes, trauma looks like decades of just eating, chatting online, the same list of stupid choices, failed jobs and grades, evictions, severed relationships, and the same relationships that hurt someone the first time the trauma happened.

Years upon years of the same BS, neverending. Always going. And for an obese person—an obese woman of color—Roxane Gay’s memoir is chronic and endemic, and it’s deeply disturbing and can feel the reader with hopelessness.

Some readers found this book boring because it just repeated the same things over and over. They lost interest. They ask, “What is in this for me? I want my money back! DO NOT READ, EVERYONE.”

If this book is anything, it is a practice in empathy for those whose lives have been debilitated and left in Limbo by the foul choices of others—even children, as Roxane Gay had been victim to. And in saying that, I will say that from my perspective, the people complaining about how bored they were and how disappointed that they didn’t get any helpful advice or “wisdom” out of this memoir completely failed in that practice.

Welcome to trauma. Welcome to sexual trauma. Welcome to rape. Welcome to PTSD. Welcome to eating disorders. And welcome to all of those things, wrapped up into a life that spent years being unresolved, misunderstood, unnoticed, invalidated, and left to rot—all because anyone could see was that Roxane Gay was fat.