We should not take up space.” Certainly we should not take up space!-Not with our bodies, and not with our minds. About the littleness of our female culture, Gay says “This is what most girls are taught – that we should be slender and small. I don’t, of course, hope for Adeline to be a fool, even a beautiful LITTLE one, but that line is al most 100 years old and it persists today. And of course it popped in my head when the technician told me I was having a girl. And of course Zelda Fitzgerald’s influential line to her husband, “ I hope she'll be a fool-that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” pervades the text through Daisy. When I found out I was having a girl, I was teaching The Great Gatsby. I also want to understand what it is to be a woman in our society, and how I can make that world better for my daughter. This summer I have been reading stories, mostly by women, as a way to find answers in my own life. And I read this memoir, highlighting most of it, my Kindle heavy with its weight, because this is a story that needs to be heard, and I wish we had more like it. She says that this is “simply, a true story” (7). She says that “there will be no picture of a thin version.emblazoned across this book’s cover” (6). She goes on to explain that this story isn’t one of “triumph”, it is not a “weight-loss memoir”. Here I offer mine with a memoir of my body and my hunger” (6).
Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body begins with the explanation: “Every body has a story and a history.