With the bracing candor, vulnerability and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body and a body that can love and be loved-in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes. I read Trevor Noah’s memoir, Born a Crime, a couple years ago, and had a small window into what it was like growing up as a mixed race child during Apartheid. In Hunger, she explores her past-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself. Hunger Roxane Gay Memoir is one of my favorite genres, because when I read memoirs, I get to read about the author’s life and experiences, which may be vastly different from mine. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care.

‘In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance and health. I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe.