Roxane Gay and her Talent!

 

    There are so many places to start with Roxane Gay, there's so much to write about. She wrote a whole memoir about her trauma, her experiences with weight and childhood. She is extremely talented and smart. Her career history is amazing, and she has survived so much. 

Personal life & Education

 She was born October 15, 1974, and is still alive today. She grew up in a town called Omaha, in Nebraska. She has a good history of education, attending a boarding school in her teenage years. As a teenager she would write start writing essays, being praised for her work and I'm sure led to a lot of her books. She attended Yale University, but she dropped out her junior year and finished her degree in Vermont at Norwich University. She completed with a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Very exciting for her, and super impressive. In 2010 she got a Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University, so as you can see, she's smart and a talented writer. (1) Roxanne Gay is openly bisexual and has had relationships with both men and women. In 2019 she got engaged to her now wife. They are still married today, and both have a close relationship with Gay's parents due to the covid lockdown forcing them to spend a lot of time together. (2) She obviously came to be an extremely talented author, her work being mainly inspired by her struggles, such as violence, sexual trauma, and her relationship with food. Her stories are emotional and a greatly recommended read.

Going into the Workforce

    Gay would go into the workforce, starting with being an assistant professor of English at Eastern Illinois University.  She then went onto being an associative professor of creative writing at Purdue University. She left that job due to not being compensated correctly. She was a visiting professor at Yale, and then finally went on to work at Rutgers University, working with Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies.

    Finally going into her writing, she published a series of short stories called Ayiti in 2011, two books in 2014, An Untamed State, and an essay collection called Bad Feminist, which is one of her most popular ones. So many other short stories, and essays. A super popular memoir of hers is called, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

    Released in June of 2017, she takes you on an emotional read, talking about her struggle with self-image and sexual trauma. She shared the common anxieties through the book and put out her psychological and emotional struggles out there. She gave us the permission and grace to see her past traumas, her struggles, and how she saved herself. "With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes." (3) This small summary just describes the overall really well, how there's a new perspective some may not have thought of. 

    Reading through reviews and what not, a majority are talking about how moving and sensitive the memoir is, how raw it is. 

    Kirkus Reviews calls it, "An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath." (4) Which goes to prove even more, how emotional of a story it is. A review by Aya de Leon from PloughShares at Emerson College says, "I believe that Gay’s memoir is not only an invitation for US audiences to see black women and fat differently, but also to see Haiti differently, as an epicenter of Black Power and resistance, spiritual force and intellectual capability, a victim and a survivor nation, and to celebrate Gay and her memoir, as an heir to that lineage and legacy." (5)

    Gay's writings are extremely emotional and turning, making you think and feel more. It gives a perspective of the aftermath of trauma and society's deal with fatphobia. 

(1) Ostberg, Rene. “Roxane Gay | Biography, Books, Essays, Podcast, Hunger, Bad Feminist, & Facts | Britannica.” Www.Britannica.Com, 11 Oct. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roxane-Gay. Accessed 19 Oct. 2026.

(2) Ondertexts. “Roxane Gay - Biography by Ondertexts.” Ondertexts, 2018, https://ondertexts.com/en/biography/roxane-gay. Accessed 19 Oct. 2026.

(3) “Hunger.” Goodreads.Com, 2017, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26074156-hunger. Accessed 19 Oct. 2026.

(4) Gay, Roxane. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2017, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/roxane-gay/hunger-gay/. Accessed 19 Oct. 2026.

(5) Guest Reviewer. “Review: HUNGER, a MEMOIR of (MY) BODY by Roxane Gay - Ploughshares.” Ploughshares, 27 Oct. 2017, https://pshares.org/blog/review-hunger-by-roxane-gay/. Accessed 19 Oct. 2026.

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