In this essay, I discuss Gay’s book in relation to feminist research tradition as well as to the 21st century’s emerging field of research for Critical health studies and Critical weight studies (the latter sometimes referred to as Critical fat studies). In these processes, as Gay’s book shows, insights, criticisms and resistance can also be created. Here the body appear as position and situation, shaped by life events, traumas and diet and activity practices, which in turn generate experiences. Gay’s memoir of (her) body illustrate how the body emerges, and is formed and interpreted, through the dynamics between the individual and personal, and the sociocultural, contextual. It is a book that, in an in-depth and touching manner, depicts the violence (physical, verbal and symbolic), abuse and restraints that the obese body is subjected to in public as well as private spaces. In Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017), writer and Associate professor of English at Purdue University, Roxane Gay, recounts her life through embodied experiences, observations and trauma.
