I can’t remember where I first encountered Roxane Gay’s writing. I think it must have been an essay on Jezebel, possibly this one reposted from xoJane. In any case, something led me to her ‘Bad Feminist’ TED talk, which led me to Bad Feminist itself, the first book of hers that I read. It felt like an incredibly important book to me; I was still relatively new to feminism at that point in my life, and mired in the kind of tumblr-feminism that was more concerned with ‘calling out’ other women and feminists for the slightest slip-up than with actually working to effect change. Bad Feminist showed me I could be a feminist and also myself, while also illuminating some of the struggles Gay has faced in her life that I haven’t, thereby expanding my field of vision.
After that, I moved to Gay’s fiction – her novel, An Untamed State. This was brilliantly written, but hard reading, as so much of the narrative focused on explicit descriptions of sexual violence and subsequent trauma. I can’t say I enjoyed it – it’s not the sort of subject matter you can enjoy – but I appreciated the skill of the author, the complexity of the characters, and the power of the narrative.
Gay’s latest offering is Hunger, another work of non-fiction, though much more clearly a memoir on a theme, as opposed to the linked-but-separate essays of Bad Feminist. Indeed, the book’s subtitle is A Memoir of (My) Body; it’s the distinctly personal journey of one woman’s body, against the backdrop of a society that attaches a multitude of implications to what it means to have a body, particularly one that doesn’t fit standards of beauty, or even acceptability. Gay’s narrative spans her whole life, from her childhood in an immigrant family with high expectations, through the sexual assault that led her to take refuge in increasing the size of her body, and into adulthood and the repercussions of those events. The picture that emerges is complex, stark, and moving; Gay’s writing is strong and unflinching from that which she wishes to share, and reveals the ambiguity of thought familiar to readers of Bad Feminist. To my mind, Hunger combines the best of what I had taken from both Bad Feminist and An Untamed State: the former’s wit, personality, insightful politics, and ability to present contradictory and even uncomfortable concepts with strength, and the latter’s boldness and brutal reality (though, of course, more literally real in Hunger’s case).
In reading Hunger, I learned an extraordinary amount about a wide array of experiences that I have never had, some of which I will never have, some of which I hope never to have. The first and foremost of these, perhaps, was to do with size; this was my first deep insight into the actual psychological and emotional experience of having a large body (or at least Gay’s own experience). Gay has reaffirmed that fat is, indeed, a feminist issue. For me, this book built the house of knowledge on the issue of size on foundations laid by Lindy West’s Shrill. Secondly, but not in importance, there in incredibly value in the honestly with which Gay portrays the experiences of a sexual assault survivor – though Gay does not shy away from the word ‘victim’ either, the implications of which are discussed in the book. Both issues appear through the lenses of Gay’s gender and race, of course, as well as her life in more rural areas of the United States. That rural setting came to life vividly for me, and provided a fitting backdrop to the unfolding of psychological and emotional events.
I’d recommend this book to anyone, but particularly to feminists – and especially white, thin- or ‘average’-bodied feminists – who are serious about learning about experiences that aren’t their own. Be prepared to be challenged and uncomfortable – that’s what makes this book brilliant. You’ll be a better person for having read it.
By Jove’s MEDEA opens next week! See here for tickets.
