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And that really helped, and I also have really firm boundaries around what I will or will not write about.Īt what point in your career did you feel comfortable getting intimate in your work, and sharing your life with the public? If it wasn’t relevant, it was something I was actually not going to include. If it was relevant to my body in some way, then it was something I was going to include. The book is a memoir of my body, and so I used that as the focal point. How did you decide what to include and what not to include? Hunger addresses very serious, non-lighthearted topics.
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The truths Gay writes about in her book aren’t easy to digest, but they’re necessary if we ever want to get to a place of understanding regarding the realities of bodies both other than and including our own.Īhead, we chat with the author about her relationship with nonfiction, The Bachelorette, and the thing she’s hungering for most in life right now. It’s her relationship with the latter that forms the foundation of the narrative, but the definition of “hunger” also extends far beyond physical appetites into deeper yearnings.
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Gay coped by turning inward, dealing with her trauma via outlets like theater, reading, writing, tattoos, the internet, and food. Hunger offers a timeline of Gay’s experience in her body, starting off by portraying what it was like to live in its young, safe iteration up to the moment it was violated. Horrific as the post was, it demonstrates the need for a book like Hunger in the world. Gay was on Twitter yesterday, though, to voice her disgust with a now-deleted story published by Australian website Mamamia, in which the site's founder spoke about Gay's weight in a way that Gay rightfully called "cruel and humiliating." The post detailed alleged accommodations made for Gay in order for her to visit the Mamamia offices, and served as an "appalling" example of the way in which Gay's size dictates how she's treated in the world. Sometimes I’m like, you know what, not today.” Rather, Gay explains, “I love Twitter, but people can just be really aggravating and really mean, and I don’t have to put up with it every day.
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Though, I will say that when I chatted with Gay on the phone about a week ago, I mentioned that I'd noticed how she'd taken a bit of a hiatus from the social media platform-but it wasn't due to a lack of free time. Oh, and remember when she profiled Madonna a few months ago? Gay also carves out time to engage with both fans and trolls on Twitter, because she clearly finds hours in the day that the rest of us just don't have. And she reads plenty of just-released books, and even reviews them on Goodreads. And it's not like Gay doesn't indulge in pop culture: She watches The Bachelorette weekly and writes about it for Marie Claire. Plus, she’s a professor at Purdue University. And she has a slew of other publishing projects coming down the pipeline. After all, not only has Gay just released Hunger, one of the most profoundly personal and impactful memoirs we’ve ever read, but she also came out with Difficult Women, a collection of short stories, earlier this year. But then, just about anyone would seem like they're not doing enough compared to the prolific writer. While it tackled hard subjects, it did so with a level of empathy, patience and even hope that gave me more faith in human resiliency.It’s easy to feel like you’re seriously slacking if you compare yourself to Roxane Gay. Much to my surprise, Difficult Women was an absolute pleasure to read. I wasn’t sure, in an already ugly year, I’d be able to handle it. I really wanted to like Difficult Women, but I knew that Gay tackles tough topics like rape, abuse, violence and grief. I’ve often bought short story collections and found their writing magnificent, but somehow put them to the side in favor of something that better grabbed my attention and offered cheerier outlook for the world.
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If anyone knows how to write, it’s Gay, but I’m also a creative writing major who oversaturated herself in literary works and turned up her nose at pop fiction until, well, I realized I kind of likean easy, entertaining read. When it came across my desk, I was both thrilled and timid. She’s been teaching, writing and editing for nearly two decades has founded her own literary press (Tiny Hardcore Press) has published a novel and a book of essays in the same year (2015) to widespread acclaim and two books of short stories.ĭifficult Women, her latest short story collection, was released in January of this year.