Book Review: Hunger by Roxane Gay

-

The memoire book Hunger by Roxane Gay is made up of several essays focused on Gay’s life-long binge eating as a way to cope with childhood trauma. The book has been hailed as a raw, real, and fearless personal account. All words which have been used to describe Gay herself as she has become a feminist icon of passionate bravado. As I read the book, I could agree with all descriptions. The book talked bluntly of trauma, body image, eating disorders, and the identity crisis of someone who felt unworthy of love; all things which are relatable to many, especially young women. For that, Hunger is a great book for young adult readers who enjoy personal stories and coming of age memoires.
However, despite this the grittiness and relatability of the material, the finer, subtler aspects of the book also had me putting it down from time to time. Gay is often repetitive; a trait which she is known for and defends. She also contradicts herself and does not take her own advice or acts how she speaks, another famous characteristic of her writing which has earned her fans and critics alike. The book could have also been better edited, as it is repetitive to the point of almost unnecessary and back to back essays often begin the same way, making the book feel unedited entirely. In addition, Gay is known as a pathos writer. While she is rightfully hailed as a raw and emotional writer, there came a point where during my reading where every account was almost too emotion-filled, making me wonder if Gay put in any critical thinking into her personal reflections or herself.

Overall, all of these points made the book almost perfect for a young adult audience, as Gay feels like a 20-something year old writer. However, she is not. She is in her forties, and this fact made me feel more confused and questioned Gay’s authority to the point where I felt uncomfortable finishing the book. In closing, I would recommend Roxane Gay’s Hunger to a young adult reader who appreciates passionate emotion and the bravery of a writer who speaks out on trauma in a matter-of-fact way. However, I would also make a point to express how ill structured the book feels overall.
By Caroline Mata, CSU Fresno Student, WRC Tutor

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to the WRC

-
Image
We are excited to announce the start of our blog for the Writing and Reading Center at Fresno City College. We, the staff, tutors, and faculty, who work at the center are excited to share blogs with you weekly about different topics of writing and reading. Our hope is that you find this blog to be inspiring, and that it will push you towards greatness. That being said, I'd like to share with you a little bit about my love of writing and reading and why I work at the WRC I started here as a tutor in 2008 when I was working on my Master's degree. I had the opportunity to work here for 2 years before I chose to move on to a job on my seminary's campus. I came back after 5 years once my M.A. was complete and began work as a supervisor in April of 2015. I have always loved reading and writing. When I was a little girl, my older sister told me that once I started reading, new worlds would be open to me. She was right. From the time I could begin to read, I voraciously attacke...
Read more

Tutoring Students with Cognitive Disabilities

-
Tutoring adults with cognitive and developmental disabilities can be difficult. To me, it is especially hard to figure out if the person is trying to take advantage of you or if they genuinely need more help than the average student. In my experience, people with cognitive and developmental disabilities do not want to take advantage of you, they might even feel embarrassed about asking you many questions. Generally people who continue to ask you questions after a half hour to an hour session with them are the people who are taking advantage of you. It is important to try and stay patient with them but make it clear that you cannot right the paper for them. Now that does not mean that all people with disabilities are perfect angels, they still might try and get you to right the paper for them. The people who try to use thier disabilities as an excuse are the ones that can be the most difficult to tutor. I have actually had a student tell me, “I have a learning disability ...
Read more

Welcome to Spring 2020!

-
Image
          Welcome to the year 2020! We are in a brand new decade as well as a new semester. So this semester remember to consider all of your resources that can ensure your success as a student! There are so many resources you can utilize during this semester, the tutorial center is open and it is free. But I would like to mainly talk to you about the WRC located in the tutorial center. Here at the WRC we love to help students better understand the concepts for writing and reading. If you have a problem understanding your textbook, need help structuring a paper, learning how to take notes efficiently, or even understanding your Canvas the WRC is the place that you can get help. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, that’s what we are here for. Let’s start this semester with the intention to succeed! Hope to see you here soon! By Victoria Ford, FCC Student, WRC Tutor
Read more