She also talked about gaining weight in order to protect herself from her assailant ever recognizing her in public. She discussed using hunger to recover from the trauma and food as a means of comfort. The final story of the night took on a decidedly more serious tone, when Gay spoke about the distance between herself and the man who had raped her.
ROXANE GAY HUNGER REVIEW TV
Amidst jokes detailing how profound her love for Garten is, Gay thanked the TV food personality for giving her permission to love food, which Gay sees as getting permission to take care of herself. In it, she jokes about how she loves to complain about exercise and hates being told what to do, which, for her, always culminates in the question, “Do personal trainers deserve to die?” Next, she read an ode to the Food Network, specifically, Barefoot Contessa’s Ina Garten. She read an excerpt on exercise that was wrought with dry hilarity. The book, which hit shelves two years ago, is about Gay’s relationship with food and her body, and how that’s changed in the wake of sexual trauma and her changing conception of identity. She began by cursing Saratoga’s weather, which was met with begrudging laughter throughout the auditorium, and went on to read a handful of excerpts from her memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. This first visual was indicative of Gay’s persona: blunt and unapologetic. After being introduced by multiple students and professors, Gay marched in wearing a simple shirt and jeans and sat on a couch onstage.
Such a big deal, in fact, that I was shocked to learn that Gay was coming to speak in Saratoga Springs-and by some stroke of luck, at Skidmore College’s Arthur Zankel Music Center on Friday, January 25. Needless to say, she’s a pretty big deal. She’s published frequently in The New York Times, edits essays for magazines and literary collectives and has been a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts. She crafts stories that are closely related to her life as a woman of color, and writes candid essays discussing formative experiences and opinions she holds. In short, she’s part of the national conversation.įor those unfamiliar with Gay, her body of work includes both fiction and nonfiction, with a voice that uses social commentary to parse through daily problems. Since then, I’ve read articles about Gay made note of her novels in the syllabus section of bookstores and even seen Instagram stories from social media influencers picturing her essay collection, Bad Feminist, placed alongside hip, healthy drink. We were reading excerpts from her short story collection, Difficult Women, in which Gay discourages her readers’ tendency to find “likability” in the female characters they read about. I first encountered the work of writer, professor and editor Roxane Gay in a college English class.