For such a vulnerable, raw memoir, no one but the author could voice the breathtaking revelations, brutal truths, and profound knowledge contained here. "Every body has a story and a history," Gay (Bad Feminist, Difficult Women) begins. Gay stands 6'3"; at her heaviest, she weighed 577 pounds. The daughter of Haitian immigrants who was raised upper-middle-class, Gay was smart, privileged, loved, and thin, like the rest of her family. Until she wasn't: "What you need to know is that my life is split in two…there is the before and after. Before I gained weight. After I gained weight. Before I was raped. After I was raped." Weight protected her, until her corpulence became a "cage" from which Gay attempts to write herself free: "This is a book about learning…to allow myself to be seen and understood."
VERDICT Gay calls this work "the most difficult writing experience of [her] life"; audiences are likely to find Hunger a difficult—yet rewarding—experience, as well. ["Displays bravery, resilience, and naked honesty from the first to last page": LJ 6/1/17 starred review of the Harper hc.]
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