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Some people think that Hawaii was the first to legalize same-sex marriage, but that crown goes to Vermont. We are two lesbian couples, married legally – our friends in California in 2014 us in Texas, November 2015. Four women in our 50s vacationing at a posh Hawaiian beach resort could only be escaping kids and husbands.īut our kids are living on their own, mostly. “Is this a girls’ trip?” our server asked, winking, before taking our cocktail orders at the poolside restaurant. It is incredibly powerful, and something that I’m planning to gift my family (and my dad) very soon.The sun sets behind CanoeHouse on Hawaii. I have the deepest gratitude to Gay for this book, for her words, for her strength and vulnerability. And it takes even more courage to finally disclose what she went through with her own family, the same one who has lovingly protected and tried to help her in the ways they knew how. It takes a lot of courage to write about her rape and her struggle with obesity, then share it with the world. I was hesitant to write a book review for Hunger because I didn’t want to minimize her trauma. So I get what Gay was going through, although on different terms. Not talking about rape or incest or molestation or sexual assault is also another ugly norm in Filipino culture, and I’ve known so many of my folks who’ve kept their families in the dark about their own traumas. As a queer immigrant from the third world myself, I come from a family where fat-shaming is a norm - done whenever there’s a family gathering, a chance to measure up everyone else in the family. I found myself in tears so many times because while she is talking about her own trauma and her own experiences, what she writes underlies what most of us go through. Gay’s experience as a fat woman and as a black woman is at odds with the Western ideal: rail thin, white, sexualized, usually blonde.
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In a culture run by capitalism, the need to cater to the male gaze and the unending dissatisfaction brought about by the media and so many industries to turn a profit come first.
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She didn’t know how to tell her parents for fear of hurting them, so she buried the painful truth and built herself an armor of defense, a fortress for one. Gay’s book is about hunger in many forms: that adolescent need to fit in and be wanted, a yearning to speak the truth without pain, the comforting solace of food, the promise of safety, to being desired and desiring other bodies.Īt the core of Hunger is how Gay has turned to food and literature among other things to keep herself safe, after being raped by a group of boys when she was younger. All I know is that I have to read Gay’s work - from An Untamed State to Bad Feminist (I’ve yet to read Difficult Women) as she’s become one of my favorite writers (in spite of that tweet suggesting Lebron join the Golden State Warriors). When I picked up Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body ( Amazon | Indiebound) by Roxane Gay, I only had the faintest notions on what it was about. It’s a brilliant formula, but only if you were actually losing weight. So I knew my dad was on to something: losing weight = looking good = feeling good. If one was gaining weight or on the heavier side though, one could expect a frown, a hushed tone, a look that implies shame. At an early age, I knew that being skinny was a compliment. My dad’s signature greeting to family relatives, friends and people he meets has always been, roughly translated from Tagalog: “Looks to me like you’re getting skinny!” It doesn’t matter if it was the first time my dad has ever seen the person, or if they’ve just seen each other the day before.Ĭue a hearty laugh, a grateful smile, a relieved sigh the greeting always yields the intended effect.