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GROSS: You must have asked yourself, why did they choose you? Why did you - what did your 12-year-old self think about that? I didn't realize that there was a vocabulary to describe the experience and that it wasn't my fault. And I didn't realize that there was a thing called rape. GAY: I had very little comprehension of what happened to me. So what was your comprehension of what had happened to you? And your - you know, you thought boyfriend was part of it. You stopped at a cabin where his friends were waiting to attack you. You were on a bike ride with him in the woods. The boy you thought of as kind of your boyfriend set you up for this. I got so angry reading that part of the story. GROSS: You write that you began to - you know, you began eating to change your body after you were gang-raped when you were 12. But in the long term, we're still waiting to see just how successful it is. In the immediate, you absolutely do lose a great deal of weight in a short amount of time. It makes you nutrient-deprived for the rest of your life. And in certain procedures, they take out part of your intestines. In many ways, you realter your anatomy and have your stomach made smaller. GAY: Well, bariatric surgery is dangerous surgery. What were some of the risks and the life-changing differences involved with this kind of procedure? And you both decided you did not want to go through with it. So I'm sure some people are thinking, like, if you have weighed that much, why didn't you have bariatric surgery? And you have a really interesting chapter in your book about how, in your late 20s, you went to an introductory session with your father. And everybody has their own preference for what word they use. Honestly, like, I don't - words are so loaded when it comes to body image. Since you're going to be talking in part about your body and your body size, I would appreciate it if you would guide me about what language you'd like me to use in terms of describing the size of your body. GROSS: So you write that, at your heaviest, you were 577 pounds. And in that moment, I knew that's something I have to write about.
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When I was thinking about what to do next in terms of nonfiction, just before "Bad Feminist" came out, I thought, you know, I really would never want to write about fatness. GAY: It felt necessary to write because it's the book I wanted to write the least. So you write about how difficult it was to write this book. I've been forced to look at my guiltiest secrets. I was forcing myself to look at what my body has endured, the weight I gained and how hard it has been to both live with and lose that weight. When I set out to write "Hunger," I was certain the words would come easily, the way they usually do.Īnd what could be easier to write about than the body I have lived in for more than 40 years? But I soon realized I was not only writing a memoir of my body. Instead, I have written this book, which has been the most difficult writing experience of my life, one far more challenging than I could have ever imagined. I wish I could write a book about being at peace and loving myself wholly at any size.
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I wish so very much that I could write a book about triumphant weight loss and how I learned to live more effectively with my demons. I don't have any powerful insight into what it takes to overcome an unruly body and unruly appetites. This is not a book that will offer motivation. There will be no picture of a thin version of me, my slender body emblazoned across this book's cover with me standing in one leg of my former, fatter self's jeans. (Reading) The story of my body is not a story of triumph. Would you read a couple of paragraphs from that for us? I'd like to start by having you read from the beginning of your book. She teaches English at Purdue University. Roxane Gay is best known for her best-selling collection of essays, "Bad Feminist." She's also a novelist and short-story writer and has been a contributing opinion writer to The New York Times. It's about starting to identify as lesbian but still being attracted to men. It's about being the daughter of middle-class Haitian immigrants and not fitting into the narrative of blackness. She thinks her body size is one of those consequences. It's about the consequences of being gang-raped when she was 12, back when she was thin. This is a book about living in the world when you are 300 or 400 pounds overweight," unquote.īut the book is about much more than that. My guest, Roxane Gay, has written a new memoir that she describes as, quote, "about living in the world when you are not a few or even 40 pounds overweight.