There’s so much in that comment: the fact that an editor at a major house felt comfortable saying that out loud, the fact that she thinks a very fat person would be “hard to look at,” her confessing that publishers consider an author’s appearance before hastily contradicting herself with what she presents as a hyperbolic scenario. But: “We would have paid her the same money if she weighed five hundred pounds and was really hard to look at. “We look at all of that stuff,” she said. Discussing Knopf’s acquisition of Stephanie Danler’s novel Sweetbitter, Herr acknowledged that the way an author looks can affect an advance. Last summer, Claudia Herr, then an editor at Knopf, casually told Entertainment Weekly that publishers think about certain factors unrelated to talent before they drop comically massive advances on debut authors. Yet we see, all the time, the ways it does matter. On the surface, this makes sense: Pages look the same no matter what the author weighs, right? Why should it matter? They express disbelief that fatness (a word they seem uncomfortable saying, or even alluding to) is any kind of obstacle to being a writer. Folks are often surprised when I make this point. As with so many other categories of identity-race, gender, sexual orientation-that lack of visibility is very much at odds with the makeup of the general population. The intersection of these realizations-that I hadn’t expected her to be fat, that I was so moved and excited that she was, that internalized fatphobia has such incredible power-surprised and disturbed me.Īs a fat writer, I have always been aware of how rarely I see other fat writers. Here was a woman I admired so acutely, in a body I wasn’t expecting, a body that in some ways looked like mine. Luminous.The first time I saw Roxane Gay, at a reading in Philadelphia for her book An Untamed State, I felt like I’d been pinched. This whip-smart book takes on everything * Guardian Best Biography and Autobiography Books of 2017 * And it's one of those books that no matter what your relationship to the body, this book is for you, all of you. It's a deeply moving, somewhat experimental, gorgeously written and brilliantly thought-out memoir. I also love that it is a story about sexual assault and the ways in which that can change your life. I love that it takes an unconventional road to storytelling and that the structure often spirals within itself in interesting ways.
I'm very thankful for Roxane Gay's Hunger, which should be and should have been on every award list if people were really reading. Her survivor's story is both understated and inspiring. I have reviewed many interesting books for the TLS this year, but the most moving is Roxane Gay's Hunger. Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and tells a story that hasn't yet been told but needs to be. With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and authority that have made her one of the most admired voices of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. 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. New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, 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.