Roxane Gay on being a fat person in a thin-obsessed world: ‘I still wonder what I would have been if I hadn’t been assaulted’ Her new book, Hunger, tells a lacerating account of how her rape at the age of 12 caused her to turn her body into a fortress

Roxane Gay is the sort of writer who makes you view the world through new eyes. Prolific, hugely intelligent, her writing bursting with wit and wisdom, the 44-year-old has written everything from novels and short-stories to cultural criticism and Marvel comics.

Each piece of work feels fresh and different, yet all are anchored by the threads of her at times harrowing personal experience, an experience which she details most thoroughly in her recent memoir Hunger, a lacerating account of how her rape at the age of 12 caused her to turn her body into a ‘fortress’ and what it feels like to be a fat person in a world obsessed with the thin.

“I hate that I still wonder what I would have been if I hadn’t been assaulted,” she says. “I do try not to obsess over it because there’s no resolution. Plus I don’t know if I would be the person I am or the writer I am without it which is haunting…[because] I like the person I am, I like the writer I am…most of the time.”

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Such clear-eyed honesty has won her fans from all ages and backgrounds. A packed event earlier this week in London’s Southbank Centre managed to be both electric in its anticipation and intensely personal in delivery. At the end the rapt audience gave Gay a standing ovation.

Hearts and minds

Meeting her in person it’s easy to see why.

Warm, charismatic and considered, her answers are as precise as her prose, and as wide-ranging taking in everything from Brexit – “If it actually happens the UK will collapse. Everyone working in service here from the hotel front desk to the housekeeping and waiters is an immigrant so what the hell is the plan?” – to the reality of life in the ‘flyover states’: “I was born and raised among these people. I’ve lived there for 80 per cent of my life. There’s no grand mystery.

“They love the way we love, they hurt the way we hurt and unfortunately because they’ve not been exposed to a great deal of diversity they’re very protective of what they have and very entitled about what they don’t. It’s a lethal combination.”

She is pleased that Hunger’s success “did change some hearts and minds about how we think about unwieldy bodies, how we treat fat people and how we accommodate different kinds of bodies in different kinds of spaces” but adds that “there’s a good deal of work to be done. Whenever people say they don’t have any kind of self-loathing I always want to say really? Teach me. Especially women. Because how do you make it through this world without some sort of self-loathing given how demonised and degraded women are and how often. You’re a miracle if that happens.”

That said her life is no longer as isolated as it was in her twenties when the Internet “allowed me to pretend I was anyone else…a saving grace when I was at my most mentally fragile and losing my sense of self”.

Stepping away

She recently moved to Los Angeles and has taken a step back from the social media whirl.

“More and more I find myself taking breaks for days and even a week at a time and it’s good stepping away. For once I have a great real life, which helps. I have good friends. I have a good partner. I have a good home. I’m definitely interested in engaging more with that.”

She is sick too of “people who expect black women to be the mules of social justice, being everything to everyone and knowing everything about all social justice movements all of the time…the people who expect that are the people who are going to drive me off Twitter because they’re so infuriating and so [she gives a deep and heart-felt sigh] terrible.”

Besides good as she is at the Twitter clapback Gay is surely too busy writing to deal with the many small stupidities of life online. Next year alone will see the publication of a Young Adult novel, The Year I Learned Everything, a book of writing advice, How to be Heard, and a collection of essays about TV.

“I love writing and I hate constraint and early on in my career I decided I was never going to be pigeon-holed,” she says. “Luckily my audience has been willing to follow where I go because it’s a joy to try different things. Storytelling is storytelling at the end of the day.”

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay is published by Corsair, £8.99. Her short story collection Ayiti is published by Corsair, £12.99 ENDS