“I want to go unnoticed. I want to hide. I want to disappear until I gain control of my body.†― Roxane Gay, Hunger. The Hunger: A memoir of (My) Body (2017) by Roxane Gay, addresses the issues of racism through the eyes of a younger woman with her physical and psychological traumatic experiences because of her alienated relation with prejudiced society. The (memoir) study explores writer’s invisible stage where society chooses not to see her, where she was never heard or recognized. Thus the study securitized over the concept of appearance, where beauty is seen as perfection, such as thin body, great hair and perfect complexion as it is socially constructed. This study will focus on the process of self-discovery from childhood to adulthood which is known as the ultimate destination for the inner exploration that helps individual to reach at the point of self-actualization. The Hunger: A memoir of (My) Body- portrays a real life character. In the Memoir, the author Roxane Gay, described her innermost harrowing experience of past, that shaped her present completely. The study explore her inner turmoil of quest for love and acceptance, which was just a dream and a deep long to possess in the place where the conventional American standards of feminine beauty is already spread its root that turned her towards the coping mechanism or lonely with only friend and that is food. Her world is entirely changed after being brutally gang raped as twelve year old girl, from then she made herself bigger and ate herself into an invisible or undesirable person. It is Gay inner strength; self-actualization that supported her to lead towards the lack of conformity, which is according to her a foolish consistency of the little mind as she says in her well known work The Hunger: A memoir of (My) Body(2017)“I openly embrace the label of bad feminist. I do so because I am flawed and human...I cannot tell you how freeing it has been to accept this about myself. I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say that I have all the answers. I am not trying to say that I’m right. I am just trying--trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world...†(Gay, x-xi)
Volume 11 | 07-Special Issue
Pages: 468-472