Roxane gay terry gross
![roxane gay terry gross roxane gay terry gross](https://res.cloudinary.com/crooked-media/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1614125055/crooked/keep-it-episode-i-really-dont-care-a-lot-do-you-twitter-917729-jHPNIU6l.jpg)
Intersectionality is a tool that can be used to study how our relation to bodies affects our production of knowledge affect theory studies emotions and experience together in order to understand how actions are performed in relation to the environment. As a memoir of gender-based violence and weight, Hunger is an example of intersectional work that, according to Bonnie Thornton Dill and Ruth Enid Zambrana, “validates … previously ignored groups of people… and is seen as a tool that can be used to help empower communities and the people in them” ( Feminist Theory Reader 191). Because Gay’s story is based on her lived experience as a black woman and survivor of sexual assault, it demonstrates an intersectionality and works to dismantle structures of power that marginalize these identities. Hunger explores Gay’s relationship to gender and the body. Gay’s experience can help further the study of bodies and understand how knowledge about women’s lives can be derived from bodily experience and sensations. By doing this, we will be able to think about how bodies are affectually created. This paper will explore key scenes from Hunger, and analyze the intersectionality at work in Gay’s lived experience. Gay desires to be “seen and understood” through Hunger, and looking at the book through an intersectional feminist lense allows for Gay’s lived experience to be not only validated but valuable to the understanding of the intersection of race, gender, weight and the body. Gay says her story, “demands to be told and deserves to be heard”, implicating the reader by creating direct involvement in her story, and encouraging the reader to be active in their response. The purpose of the memoir is to help people understand our complicated relationship with weight, weight loss, and weight gain, especially as women in a society which places value in appearance and passes unfair judgement on those who do not fit the typical, ascribed body.
![roxane gay terry gross roxane gay terry gross](https://onegrandbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/toa-heftiba-k2A0ZDFyPAg-unsplash-1-1024x683.jpg)
Gay emphasizes that the memoir is not a story of weight-loss, but a story of the journey of her relationship with her body, including weight gain and loss, eating disorder, shame, guilt, strength, and willpower.
![roxane gay terry gross roxane gay terry gross](https://www.pw.org/files/styles/magazine_article/public/h1900004.jpg)
Hunger follows Gay’s life through her childhood, describing how sexual assault shaped her eating habits and how this entwined with her identity. Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger: A Memoir of (my) Body demonstrates an intersectionality of race and gender through lived experience within her life writing.