Hunger. A Memoir of (My) Body

13.90

Title: Hunger

Author: Roxan Gay

Translator: Mina Amiri

Publisher: Nik Farjam

Subject: Eating Disorders – Autobiography / Discrimination against Overweight People / Children Victims of Sexual Abuse / Overweight Women / Black American Women

Age category: Adult

Number of pages: 222

Language: Farsi

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Description

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Hunger, My Story (Body) by Roxane Gay has been published in 2017. This book tells the story of Roxanegi himself. In this book, he describes life through the eyes of a heavyweight and depicts the atrocities that are inflicted on him. The author recounts his feelings during obesity; Over time, he is increasingly ignored and even sometimes rejected by society. Hunger is a true narrative of various aspects of a life. This book is not a motivational story after which you decide to lose weight, but a forty-year-old physical story of being raped at the age of twelve.

Today, the world of technology and communication has a great impact on our personal lives;

Our lifestyle, clothes, socializing, behavior and appearance are tied to the advertisements of the modern world, which may bring us new food at any moment. Weight and body shape is one of the topics that has attracted a lot of attention, many of us spend many hours of our lives in clubs, doctors’ offices and bodybuilding centers to bring ourselves to the minimum fashion standards in the world.
We think that if we fall behind this caravan, we will be considered ugly and our society will judge us. In The Hunger, Roxanegi recounts a similar experience in this way, challenging stereotypes and becoming the voice of people with different appearances who fall victim to a system that seeks to make all human beings alike and in the same form.

Narrating the problems of an obese person’s life in the form of a book is new, but it is a recurring theme in the modern world. In The Hunger, Roxanegi divides her life into three parts: childhood, adolescence, and the third decade, and discusses issues that have changed her life and body. Roxane weighed 262 kg and the book started with her presence in the surgery clinic. He is sitting in the clinic with his father next to a group of doctors to assess the aspects of Roxane surgery. They decide to save him from obesity. Roxane describes her mixed thoughts as follows: “I have been told that my presence is visible.

I occupy space. I create fear. And I do not want to occupy space.

I like to pass without attracting attention, I like to hide. “I would like to disappear until I control my body.” Obesity was a self-inflicted rash, and after being harassed by a group of boys, he decided not to curb his appetite and to reach an organ that became ugly and disgusting by overeating. He wanted to avoid the troubles that the boys were causing.

In a day when most girls want to be favored by boys and be seen by them, Roxane resists what society expects of her as a girl and does not give up. he does. Roxane becomes so obese that she experiences a strange weight and, of course, her feelings for herself become annoying. He does not feel comfortable, suffers from a variety of physical ailments, and is unable to perform many tasks.

Roxane Gay was born in October 1974 in Omaha, USA. He went on to pursue a doctorate and graduated from the University of Michigan in 2010. After graduating, Roxanegi taught at the university as an English assistant professor; He sometimes wrote and did research. In 2011 she published her first collection of short stories, followed by serious book writing, and in 2014 she published Bad Feminist and An Untamed State. “This year is the year of Roxanne,” Time magazine said in the wake of a series of books published in 2014.

Roxanegi became world famous with the publication of the books “Bad Feminist” and “Unusual State”.

In a short time, The Bad Feminist was translated into several languages ​​and became the New York Times bestseller. The book “Unusual State” also attracted a lot of critics, and various newspapers, including the Guardian and the Washington Post, published articles about it.

After these two books, Raksaneh wrote the book “Difficult Women” in 2017. This book is a collection of short stories in which the women of each story are in different social conditions and their different lifestyles are told.

Roxanegi, who has always been known as a writer, literary critic and feminist, was nominated for the best autobiography on Goodreaders with the release of Hunger, The Story of the Body (I), and attracted the attention of many readers and literary critics. کرد.

Roxane has also published numerous articles on social issues and women’s rights. He worked for the American Guardian newspaper from 2015 to 2018.

In part of the book Hunger we read:

I never seem to stick to the most important elements of my mom’s recipes, so when I’m trying to cook some Haitian food at home, she calls home and she patiently guides me step by step. Food sauce is simple but difficult to learn and makes me helpless. My mother reminds me to put on my cooking gloves. I pretend that something like this always has a place in my kitchen. After sternly reminding us to wash everything, he tells me to chop the onion and red pepper and set aside the vegetables for now.

My kitchen is heated by the heat of the house. The sauce always comes out well enough, but not great. I can not understand what is lacking, and my suspicions are reinforced by the fact that my mother is struggling to retell a vital piece of information. When I eat the food of my childhood that I made with my own hands, I am filled with silent passion and anger arising from the strict love and good intentions of my family.

There is Haitian food that is good at cooking, our pasta and cheese that fills the belly, but not as heavily as the American version. When I attend a communal food gathering, I eat the same food, an activity that I dread because I am overly pessimistic and pessimistic about communal food. It always impresses people. I think they feel more global.

They expect a rich narrative behind this food because we have cultural expectations of “ethnic food”.

I do not know how to explain that for me, this food is just food that I love, but I can not make the connection that they imagine. This food, and often other Haitian food, is tied to my love for my family and my quiet, steadfast anger, rather than a statement about my family culture.

The Hunger Book is the work of Roxanne Gay, author, university professor, editor and literary critic. She rose to fame with the book Bad Feminist and became one of the New York Times bestsellers.

Miad Banki – translator – writes about this book in his introduction: The book of hunger is a biography about his body; In this book, he talks about what his body has endured. Relaxation takes readers to dark and uncomfortable places. It examines mental and physical damage well and does not hide anything because of its explicit pen. This book is about people who are broken and for whatever reason, they think they are useless, they are nothing. People who have remained silent in the face of violence. People who need to break their silence.

In the back cover of Roxanne Gay’s book, he describes his book as follows:

Writing this book is the hardest thing I have ever done. It was not easy to expose myself to vulnerability. Facing myself and how life was in my body was not easy, but I wrote this book because I felt it was necessary. In writing the story of my body, in telling these truths about my body, I share the truth of myself and only myself.

I understand if that truth is not what your heart desires to hear. The truth upsets me too. But I also say, this book is my heart, what is left of my heart. In this book, I show you the intensity of my hunger. Also, in this book, I finally let go of myself to be vulnerable and human. In this book, in that liberation, see what I am thirsty for and my truth has allowed me to create what.
The Book of Hunger was nominated for Best Book of History on Goodreads in 2017, and many critics and writers, including David Sedaris, named Hunger the Book of the Year, and the book caused a stir among Goodreads and Instagram users. But what is the reason for this welcome and seeing the book that is in the category of biography? Follow us with the introduction of the book Hunger.

Hunger by Roxanne Gay

The book describes the author’s personal life and very private experiences. Since he was gang-raped at the age of 12 and then, this mental and physical trauma leads to making decisions and changing the course of his life.

This book is very different from books that seek to help and falsely inspire you by expressing personal experiences. As the author puts it in an interview: “I do not like people to look at my book as a golden key. A book is definitely a good book, but not a key!”

Roxanne Gay says at the beginning of the book:

Writing this book is a confession. These are the ugliest, weakest, most naked parts of my being. This is my truth. This is the story of the body (me) because, most of the time, the stories of bodies like my body are either ignored, rejected, or ridiculed. People see bodies like mine and make hypotheses for themselves. They think they know the reason for my obesity. they do not know. This is not a victory story, but a story that needs to be told and deserves to be heard.

Since this book is not the story of a victory, we realize that the book we have in our hands is not going to have a happy ending! It is not supposed to be a source of inspiration and full of so-called positive energy and slogans, hunger is not a self-healing book, in the best definition, it is the truth and pure reality. So is life itself.

We all know that life is sometimes cruel and how hard it can be on us. You may ask why I read a book that I know is not going to reach a promising conclusion? Because that is the reality of life!

Life is not a joke with us, life does not dance to our instrument and if we want to be honest we are no longer children!

We must not deceive ourselves with the words of a happy heart, we must understand the truth of life and accept that we can not change it completely, and this book shakes our souls so that apart from understanding human beings and society, we can as far as we can from me. Let’s start with ourselves and bring our minds and behaviors responsibly. So the bitterness of this book is itself the best tool for changing us and perhaps the most powerful tool for understanding us.

Roxane Gay’s pen is very straightforward, he is not afraid to share with you the most humiliating moments he has experienced. He has decided to recount everything, completely, and wants to show you the amount of pain he has suffered by showing the most personal aspects of his life. (He has done this well!) By showing that we are not human, also he should torment us and flip us over all the misconceptions and rejections and wrong standards that have made society, and there is no escape from them.
The many examples he cites from his life moments show how much we are unaware of the aspects of human life and personal problems and how much we act without thinking. Despite the fact that we need to know how much every little word or bad behavior or even the way we look can affect people’s lives and be painful for them. Blaming ourselves seems to be a burden on us, this unreasonable blaming seems to point the finger of blame at our conscience that we caused this exemplary human being to suffer like this.

Every moment you read the book Hunger, you feel that you have really entered the life of the author!

Nothing is hidden from you, and this experience of living and looking through the window of another eye is bestowed on you by the power of the writer’s pen, and even if the same thing has not happened to you, you can well cope with the author’s sympathy and understanding. In fact, it can be said that if the book can not affect you, you should be worried about the weakening of your inner human image!

Roxanne Gay’s main focus on explaining what rape and juvenile delinquency and then the decisions she has made will affect her life. At first, in the objective phase, it seems that the book is about the problems of obesity or the impact of rape on this woman’s life, but in fact, the concept of the book can be extended to many of our individual and social problems. The main theme of the book is the fear of not being loved and being alone. What social frameworks do with our lives goes so far as to blame ourselves even though we know we did not do wrong, and then to make up for this guilt and guilt by accepting and accepting every action and every word. Let’s even go so far as not to make up for the mistake!

This is the pain of this biography, which reminds us of what we have done to be accepted, to be seen and to be loved.

How much have we kept our true selves and how much have we deliberately, forcefully and painfully asked to change it? Who have we transformed ourselves into in order to be in the preconceived notions of society? A man who cries alone and stands before the judgment of a weak and silent society and forcibly smiles while his heart is being torn.

Hunger is a book that, apart from being biographical, can be studied and discussed in terms of: education, community policy, psychology and ethics. Even choosing the name “Hunger” is very smart and accurate! The hunger that the author breathes is not the only craving to quench the appetite! It is a desire we have as human beings to be seen and accepted, to not be alone and to be understood, to feel safe, so if you have felt just as hungry, do not give up reading the book of hunger.

After reading the book, we certainly can not look at people as before.

We can not easily judge people without thinking about their past and personal lives. I hope we can no longer set boundaries or frameworks and remember what a bitter and painful life people living outside of this framework must experience because we have rejected their chests. And if that did not happen and this book did not affect us, woe to us! Woe to our minds and souls that are even heavier and more cruel than life.
Reading this book also conveys the power and courage of the author to us. Although the author may not even be content to call himself bold!

But reading all this recklessness and the desire to tell the bitterest facts without fear, the feedback of this splitting of life, gives the reader a lot of courage. The reader realizes that he is not the only one who carries all this heavy burden of cruelty with him, he realizes that he is not alone and how painful it is not to be alone for the first time. Perhaps knowing this loneliness gave the author the courage to write his biography at this age and after all these years, for all those who accepted the rejection, for all those who were afraid to tell what had happened to them. Roxanne is the voice of all these people, the voice that rose with power and expressed the reality of his life and brought us to ourselves.

The readers of this book each learn a lesson from this book, and according to the perception and life of each person, one can talk about this written life for hours, but the best advice at the present time is to read this book.

I recommend reading this book to all serious and non-serious readers of the book, even if you have never been interested in biography, let this book be the first biography that affects your life! Do not easily miss this author.
The translation of this book is brilliant and powerful. Also, the Persian translator is extremely strong and has maintained the author’s tone in the translation. The translator has also been in contact with the author via email, which has added to the accuracy and responsibility of the translation. Also, the footnotes of the book, which are all written by the translator, are very accurate, precise and well done. Congratulations to Mr. Miad Banki for the brilliant translation of this book, which has been difficult due to the author’s complex style.

I hope that this book will be read and that the readers, under the influence of the opium of this book, will reconsider their personal and social social life. And hunger will surely keep your mind busy for a long time and it will not be easy to resume the next study!

Sentences from the text of the book Hunger

This is what most girls are taught – that we should be small and elegant. We should not occupy space. We must be seen and not heard, and when we are seen, we must please men, we must be liked by society. And most women know that we are not expected to be exposed, but that is something that needs to be said out loud, over and over again, so that we can resist giving in to what is expected of us. (The Book of Hunger – Page 21)

I am not brave or heroic. I’m not strong. I’m not special. I am a woman who has experienced something that countless women have experienced. I am the victim who was saved. It could have been worse, much worse. What matters, and even more shocking, is that such a story is quite common. (The Book of Hunger – Page 43)
When you gain weight, when you lose weight, or when you maintain an unacceptable weight, your body is a subject for comment. People are quick to provide statistics and information about the dangers of obesity, as if you were not only obese, but also surprisingly stupid, ignorant, and delusional about the facts of your body and the world with which it is so unkind. These comments are often expressed in the form of concern, in the form that people just want the best for you. They forget that you are a human being. You are your body, nothing more, and your body must be much smaller. (The Book of Hunger – Page 115)

It is a common belief that obese people are carrying a thin woman inside them.

Every time I see this particular ad, I think, I ate that skinny woman and she was delicious but she was not satisfied. And then I think how nonsensical it is to promote the notion that the truest of us are skinny women hiding inside our fat bodies like swindlers, usurpers, and illegitimate people. (The Book of Hunger – Page 128)
What I have to say is, I know what it means to be hungry without being hungry. My father thinks hunger is dependent on the mind. I have a different opinion. In my opinion, hunger depends on the mind, body, heart and soul. (The Book of Hunger – Page 173)

Sometimes people who, I think, have good intentions say that I’m not fat. They say things like, “Don’t say that about yourself,” because they think “obesity” is something to be ashamed of, something offensive, while I consider “obesity” to be the truth of my body. I do not insult myself when I use that word. I’m describing myself.

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1- Introducing the book  on YouTube

2- Introducing the book  in Aparat

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