Roxane Gay’s Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body was described to me by multiple people as an almost unbearably brutal book, and it is. You yearn for Gay to be a little kinder to herself as she glides through her past, reckoning with all the things she did with her body and, more significantly, the things that were done to it. But, you realise, anything less would be dishonest. We don’t hold back when we talk to ourselves about ourselves, and that’s what Gay has given us here: elegantly rendered essays with the intimacy of an inner monologue. There’s something about honesty this bare - you cannot argue with it.
Lines such as, “I am always uncomfortable or in pain,” leave you no wiggle room to turn away from empathy. Gay may not want to be a spokesperson for all fat people - Hunger is adamantly her story, not a universal story - but the fact is that thin people will read this book and be changed. I sat down with her at home in Los Angeles. Excerpts:
I’m resentful of the way that fat people and also, especially, rape victims are expected to just flay themselves and let any old person dig around inside them to earn their humanity. But I guess, on the other hand, telling these stories is cathartic. And hearing the stories of fat women helped me, it made my life better, and I think it does make a difference in terms of the general perception of us. So, how do you walk that line between maintaining your dignity and not just letting people eat you alive?
I just have firm boundaries and I stick to them. A lot of times in interviews people just want me to, like, repeat everything I wrote in the book. “So, you were raped?” Like, yeah. And then they want details, and I’m just like: “Well, read the book,” because I don’t need to recite it over and over again in order for it to be relevant or real. It’s very weird, and I suppose that’s the price you pay when you write personally, as a woman. But, what’s interesting to me is that people focus on the personal, and they completely ignore the professional. Like ... that it’s a book. That you used craft to write the book, that it’s not a therapy session, or a diary entry.
There is this idea that it’s easy.
Yeah, like: “Oh yeah, I just sort of jotted down a few memories,” but no, that’s not true. You have to organise things, and you have to make decisions, and you have to think about voice and style and it’s a lot of work.
And there are layers of people not taking you seriously. People already don’t take you seriously as a woman, people don’t take you seriously as a fat person, people don’t take you seriously as a black woman. It is a lot to get past.
It is a lot to get past, and what’s interesting is that even other writers who know better will dismiss the work that you’re doing. The two negative reviews that I’ve gotten have called me a populist, and ...
As a pejorative?
Well, I don’t think it’s a compliment. Donald Trump is considered a populist. Today, the New Yorker called me a “diarist.” The opening lines were that I came to fame as a diarist, which is just not true. I have a whole body of work. But even if it were true, there’s this smug sense that it’s just: “Oh, I’m sitting in my bed and I opened up my heart-locket diary and I’m just jotting down some thoughts!” and it’s just all emotion and that none of it is intellectual.
And that women’s lives are not serious.
Correct, because no one’s calling ... what’s his name ... [Karl Ove] Knausgaard . No one’s calling him a diarist. And he is a diarist. It’s odd.
Do you like writing non-fiction?
It depends on the kind of non-fiction that I’m writing. I do enjoy writing essays. The reality is that a lot of the non-fiction that I write is on difficult stuff, so it can be challenging.
I never wanted to write about my body, and I didn’t want to write about being harassed on the internet. I was just talking to Ijeoma Oluo, my sister-in-law, and it’s not like Ijeoma’s favourite thing is racism and it’s the only thing she wants to talk about. But we’re cornered. We’re forced into these niches in a way that white men never are. And it seems like a through-line, even in Bad Feminist, that you never asked to be an activist or a representative.
No, I did not. I don’t shun it. But the cultural imagination is very limited, and when you talk about one issue, people think that you’re the spokesperson for that issue and that you don’t have the range, that that’s all you’re capable of doing, whether it’s racism or fatness or trolling on the internet. And it’s so unfair and it’s so limiting, and it shows that marginalised people aren’t allowed to be artists. They aren’t allowed to be intellectuals. We’re expected to only be activists or people who are singular and can only write about the self.
So, what are you passionate about? What are your favourite things to write about?
My favourite things to write about are pop culture — I love writing about pop culture. I love writing fiction. I love writing about gender-related issues. I’m really interested in writing about reproductive freedom. That is something I do enjoy writing about, as much as one can enjoy it, because it just boggles the mind that we’re still having these conversations about equitable access to women’s healthcare.
It seems as if the next frontier in fat activism is figuring out how to let people actually have the feelings that they have about their bodies without validating our culture’s hierarchy of bodies. I think about the negative responses within the fat community to Gabourey Sidibe and Ashley Nell Tipton ‘s weight-loss surgery, and - a movement so dominated by white women telling women of colour who are trying to live in showbusiness and fashion that they have to just swallow it every day ...
For the greater good. And then for whose greater good? I didn’t realise Gabourey had had the surgery until I read her memoir. And then I thought, of course. I knew it was going to happen eventually, and I understood. Because to be that visible in popular culture - now the more weight she loses, as heartbreaking as it is, the more roles she’s going to get, and the more of a career she’s going to have, and people always want someone to take it for the team to their own detriment. But it’s such a personal choice - like, let her live. Only she lives in her body and only I live in my body and only you live in your body.
It is important to talk about the fact that weight-loss surgery is dangerous, that people die. It’s barbaric that so many people feel pressured to have this surgery that can kill them. But also, so much of what the fat acceptance movement does is catalogue all the ways that this system is unbearable to live inside of. And then to tell people that they failed by caving in any variety of ways to this system that we know, better than anyone, is unbearable? It doesn’t make any sense. And I just have no interest, as a feminist, in adding things to the list of impossible standards.
I agree. I think we can have critical conversations, as challenging as it is to hear yourself being criticised, but when you condemn the choices of other women - and I don’t believe in choice feminism - but when you condemn rational choices ... like, can you imagine how staggering fatphobia is that someone says, “Yeah, I’m going to have surgery to completely rearrange my body for the rest of my life, and I’m going to be nutrient-deprived for the rest of my life, and I might die doing this, but that’s better than spending another day in this body in this world.” I have nothing but empathy for anyone who gets the surgery. I have a great following and I love that, but that doesn’t protect me from the asshole at the table next to me in a restaurant, or the guy shouting at me from his car when I’m walking down the street, or the kid on the aeroplane two days ago that stood on his seat and looked back at me and said, “You’re a big guy,” over and over again. These are not things that success can shield you from.
And to have to convince people that that’s real, on top of dealing with it, is so exhausting.
It is exhausting, because often I think: “Oh, it’s not that bad,” or “It’s in your head,” but no, it is that bad. And actually, it’s much worse and I’m being circumspect because I have to be able to hold on to a shred of dignity to get through the rest of this day.
What’s the weirdest diet advice you’ve ever received?
Oh, it’s all weird, and it’s all terrible. You know, fat people know more about nutrition and exercise than pretty much anyone else. The other day a man wrote to me and he said something to the effect of, “I don’t know if you know this, but exercise is required to lose weight. So maybe you should walk three times a week.” And I was like, huh! Maybe you’re on to something! People assume that we don’t work out. I have a trainer. I know what exercise is. I’ve taken nutrition classes. I’ve had nutritionists. I’ve had therapists. I have spent so much money on weight loss over the past 30 years.
The fat tax.
Seriously. I’ve spent at least $150,000 on weight loss. At this point the surgery would be the cheapest thing I do.
Do you still consider surgery?
I’ve thought about it. I’m always thinking about it. I’m really scared of it. But I support people who want to do it - I get reaching the breaking point.
What I would love is if people, especially really young women, had doctors who took them seriously, and didn’t just tell them, “Oh, you have to get this surgery or you’re going to die.” What people need is real information.
And real healthcare! Half the issues that fat people face happen because of accumulation of lack of healthcare. It’s not that you just are fat and all of a sudden you have diabetes or high blood pressure, it’s that you go to the doctor for a physical or strep throat or heart palpitations and they just say, “You’re fat, lose weight,” and they don’t treat you, and then you stop going to the doctor. And then 10 years later, of course you’re an explosion of medical issues. Because you’re a human body and you haven’t seen competent medical professionals. It’s a disgrace.
You’re accomplished and successful and revered - do you ever think: “Man, where would I be if I was conventionally hot? Would I be president?”
One of the things I joke about with my mom all the time is that if I was conventionally hot and I had a slammin’ body, I would be president. Absolutely. Because when I think about how hard I’ve had to work to get to where I am - one of the things that gets under my skin is that I’m always referred to as prolific. And that’s fine. I am prolific. But people don’t understand where that comes from. Do you see how much I had to write to get you to even notice me? And that’s because I’m fat. I know that. That’s how much work I’ve had to put in to get a fraction of the attention that a conventionally attractive thin person is going to get. And to just be dismissed - I’m not going to let it go - as a populist and a diarist? It’s Dr Diarist to you.
–Guardian News & Media Ltd
Hunger: A Memoir Of (My) Body was published on July 6 by Corsair.
