She describes the enthralling process of growing “immersed in the anonymity” of the internet she loves “the water, the freedom of moving through it, feeling weightless” she loses herself in food, in its comforting oblivion, and then finds herself submerged in her physical form. Gay, who at one point weighed 577 pounds, speaks of her flesh as “layers of protection I built around myself,” likening her frame to a “fortress” or “cage.” She says that the idea of enclosure in other spaces enchants her. They announce the author’s hard journey: After years of feeling alienated and powerless inside her body, Gay will attempt, through her storytelling, to take full possession of it. Those parentheses seem designed to call the ownership of her body into question. Roxane Gay’s new book-the “most difficult writing experience of my life,” she admits on -is called Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.
