Roxane Gay: Hunger

At twelve, Gay was gang-raped. Since then her life and body had changed forever. She became “super morbidly obese.” She ate and ate and ate to keep men away. She believed that the bigger the safer. Hunger is deeply personal and Gay’s prose is ruthlessly honest. On inspirational commercial, for example, she writes:

In yet another commercial, Oprah somberly says, “Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be.” This is a popular notion, the idea that the fat among us are carrying a thin women inside. Each time I see this particular commercial, I think, I ate that thin woman and she was delicious but unsatisfying. And then I think about how fucked up it is to promote this idea that our truest selves are thin women hiding in our fat bodies like imposters, usurpers, illegitimates. (p. 139)

An unspeakably aching read.