Gay also keeps the same nonchalant, distant tone for the entire memoir, not just when she is writing about specific moments of trauma, by frequently employing anaphora in many of her chapters. The decision to introduce the rape in this was as opposed to say, writing it with long, engaging sentences paired with a liberal use of profanity, allows the memoir to slowly unfold in a calm and matter of fact way rather than making the reader feel scared and apprehensive about what may be coming next. I was young and I took my body for granted and then I learned about the terrible things that could happen to a girl body and everything changed” (38). For instance, when she introduces the story of her rape, she simply says, “Something terrible happened. Using this kind of writing style makes the writer seem detached, conveying a sad, melancholic tone. She employs long successions of simple sentences as well as lengthy streams of independent clauses connected by simple conjunctions.
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Gay sometimes writes about her childhood trauma and the everyday traumas she faces as an adult in a way that seems dismissive and distant, like she is unsure how to talk about the happenings of her life. Perhaps my opinion has been influenced by my decision to listen to the audio version (narrated by Gay) as I read, but the tone of the memoir seems raw, honest, and sort of cavalier. In sum, then, Gay’s memoir skillfully paints a vivid picture of the myriad hardships experienced by those living in fat bodies. Although some may say that Hunger is ultimately an account of the traumatic experience Gay had as a young girl that caused her to build her body into a place where she could “hide in plain sight… feeding a hunger that could never be satisfied” (61), Gay’s comments throughout the memoir bring to light a plethora of different issues regarding living in a fat body and being destroyed by several different kinds of trauma. This is a book about disappearing and being lost and wanting so very much and… learning, however slowly, to allow myself to be seen and understood” (5). She goes on to explain that “this is not a story about triumph….
This is a memoir of (my) body because, more often than not, stories of bodies like mine are ignored or dismissed or derided” (5). When prepping her reader for the memoir that would come after the first few chapters, Gay specifically observes “This is my truth. In Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Roxane Gay dissects her trauma, as well as her personal battles with the social constructs of beauty, gender, fashion, femininity, and disability regarding her own body.
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In her free time, she likes to read memoirs and cook things from scratch! Cydney plans to graduate with her Master’s and teach for a while before pursuing a Ph.D. Cydney Price is a second year graduate student at Georgia Southern University working toward her Master’s degree in English Literature.