Roxane Gay | Speaker | TED

Contents:

• WE SAT DOWN WH ROXANE GAY TO TALK ABOUT SEX, LOVE, AND SOUL MAT
• JODI PIULT’S NEW NOVEL REVIEWED BY ROXANE GAY
• ROXANE GAY: BY THE BOOK
• A REVIEW OF “HUNGER” BY ROXANE GAY
• BT BOOKS OF 2014: ROXANE GAY
• ROXANE GAY LNCH NEWSLETTER, BOOK CLUB
• THE FIRST THREE BOOKS OM ROXANE GAY’S IMPRT HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED.
• ROXANE GAY MASTERCLASS REVIEW
• ROXANE GAY

WE SAT DOWN WH ROXANE GAY TO TALK ABOUT SEX, LOVE, AND SOUL MAT

" Roxane Gay asks. Gay draws a hard le. Roxane Gay's known for her honty, her willgns to tackle plited subjects; she's wrten extensively about her childhood sexual asslt.

I sat down wh Roxane Gay, the btsellg thor of Bad Femist and Hunger, for this week's episo of The Advote's podst, LGBTQ&A, to talk about the other challeng that e wh wrg about love, how she's jt enterg to her sexual prime at 44, and why the stori of trma her rears share keep her up at night.

We're still a place society where havg a fat person do that is Gay: Very much so, bee people thk that when you're fat, you're sexls and oftentim genrls, and that you don't have a sex life of any kd, that people don't see you as the men on Twter who are sultg me all day, they genuely seem to thk that I'm jt stg my hoe by myself.

JODI PIULT’S NEW NOVEL REVIEWED BY ROXANE GAY

And I don't here to listen to the full terview wh Roxane Gay on LGBTQ&A. I tst that the next time she wr about race — and I do hope there is a next time — she’ll wre about ways that will also be pellg for the rt of Gay’s new story llectn, “Difficult Women, ” will be published January.

Come look at the eak, the movie beckons.Roxane Gay is the Gloria Steem endowed chair at Rutgers Universy, the thor of the forthg “Opns” and a ntributg Opn wrer.

ROXANE GAY: BY THE BOOK

@RGay A versn of this article appears prt on  , Sectn A, Page 18 of the New York edn wh the headle: The Cel Spectacle of ‘The Whale’. A versn of this article appears prt on, Page 7 of the Sunday Book Review wh the headle: Roxane Gay.

A REVIEW OF “HUNGER” BY ROXANE GAY

Wrten by Roxane Gay, the thor of Difficult Women, Hunger is a personal and harrowg tale that tails her stggle wh weight and how has impacted her childhood, teens, and twenti. In the begng, she opens up wh the stggle of alg wh her “wildly undiscipled” body and how she claims she is “trapped a ge” (Gay 17) bee of the rape she suffered when she was twelve years old. So, she turned to food as a fort, gag more and more weight bee “[If] I [Gay] felt unsirable, then I uld keep more hurt away” (Gay 15).

Me is, simply, a te story” (Gay 4). This novel really helped me to unrstand Gay’s stggl ways I never would have imaged. Gay’s trma plays a very large role her stggle wh her body, and a way this memoir puts you to her body and mak you feel all of her imperfectns.

BT BOOKS OF 2014: ROXANE GAY

Like Tiara I also felt as if I uld better unrstand her pot of view when Gay went to tail about her trma.

She looks at her body as a nstant physil remr of the trma she endured: “The past is wrten on my [Gay’s] body.

ROXANE GAY LNCH NEWSLETTER, BOOK CLUB

I rry every sgle day, ” (Gay 41). “Those boys treated me [Gay] like nothg so I beme nothg, ” (Gay 45). However, wasn’t until high school that she learned that “beg raped wasn’t my [Gay’s] flt, ” (Gay 71).

Yet, even wh this new possibily of healg we see that Gay don’t see herself beg able to tly heal. Gay’s trma beg a key factor for her weight ga is very tune wh current social issu. Whout unrstandg Gay’s mental stggl over most of her life we wouldn’t really be able to see how that has shaped who she is.

Eatg was Gay’s pg mechanism and not a rult of beg lazy. In a world where girls are told to drs more nservatively to avoid harassment om boys, Gay’s adolcent self took that one step further and changed her body to protect herself.

THE FIRST THREE BOOKS OM ROXANE GAY’S IMPRT HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED.

One thg I noticed that was very proment this sectn was that Gay tip-toed around the subject of her trma before divg wh tails. Followg up wh Tatiana’s statements, Gay elaborat how, while she is the e for her weight ga, she do not agree wh the extreme health and bety standards that Ameri has adopted. Gay is Haian-Amerin and her herage and hoehold, beg overweight be a huge ncern.

She stat, “when you are overweight a Haian fay, your body is a fay ncern” (Gay 55), mostly, as she also explas, is the fact that they associate beg overweight wh beg gluttono. In fact, “Haians love the food om our island, but they judge gluttony” (Gay 55). Gay is one such example where her perceptn of body image was thrown off wh the negative outlook she started to have about herself when she learned how the terms “fat” and “skny” were ed so extremely.

ROXANE GAY MASTERCLASS REVIEW

Gay uld be nervo about rememberg what had occurred her life, not wantg to have to rell the trmatic experienc and the feelgs associated wh them. To further dive to what Mike was workg through on Gay’s stggle, I feel that Gay mak a pot to say that the stggle she fac wh her body is even more plited by the shame she feels.

Fat-shamg be an ever-prent problem for her her daily life, which we see when she says, “When I am walkg down the street, men lean out their r wdows and shout vulgar thgs at me about my body, how they see , and how upsets them that I am not terg to their gaze, ” (Gay 188). She explas that this creat a nflictg environment for her (Gay 199).

ROXANE GAY

I thk Gay hs the mark wh another major social issue wh this sectn, which I thk only strengthens her wrg. This is what Gay ma a pot of when explag her own stggle wh eatg disorrs.