HUNGER, Roxane Gay

'I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.'
New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay

This is an exceptional book although a very painful one. I cannot recall a memoir more painful. Roxane Gay, a professor and the author of several other works, lays out the pivotal event in her life. The event that sent her on an eating binge that still goes on. At 12, she was gang-raped by a group of boys. Her accelerated eating quickly followed this. Her thinking was that if she was large, she would be less vulnerable. And she is large at 6'4 and of varying weights. In HUNGER, she tells us everything about herself: the shame she feels at her weight, the horrible insults hurled at her in person and through social media, the difficulties being fat incurs, all of it. You can find many interviews with Professor Gay on you tube if you'd like to hear her. Or read the book. It took her almost thirty years to tell her story--and she tells it all. Brave woman.

Whose memoir moved you?