There is the humiliation of a doctor’s visit, where your very being is regarded as evidence of sickness, and employees who are supposed to be professional can barely hide their pity or disdain.
There is the anxiety about whether there will be stairs to climb at a speaking engagement, or chairs so small and tight that they make your knees swell. Gay takes us on a journey in which we learn what it is to exist in a society that accuses you of taking up too much room, even as it refuses to yield a place for you. It is a thirst for a culture that might encourage each of us to feel comfort in whatever body we are in - a culture that does not exist. It is an aching to be valued by those who cannot see beyond a body. This wrenching work, in which Gay peels back the layers to reveal the trauma that led her, at her heaviest, to weigh 577 pounds, is a yearning to be unburdened of secrets.
Title: Difficult Women Author: Roxane Gay Any audio format. Paid rewards will appear as locked topics. Roxane Gay's Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Harper, 320 pp., ***½ out of 4 stars) is a story about craving, but not for what you think. Difficult Women by Roxane Gay AB All fulfilled requests will be stored here.
