She still grapples with her weight, and battles with demons. She makes it clear that this isn’t a book about overcoming obesity – she hasn’t. She became super-morbidly obese (an actual term that’s used by the medical establishment) in an attempt to build her body into a fortress that could not be hurt. Her memoir is about her painful past, how she was gang raped at the age of 12 and how that unthinkable experience shaped the rest of her life, how it shaped her body. She writes exquisitely, it’s direct and crystal clear. Gay is a New York darling though, after her NYT bestseller Bad Feminist endeared her to both women and men.
That is the wet dream of every writer in NYC. Such is the power of Roxane Gay who can make GRUMPY NEW YORKERS feel so strongly about her writing that they are willing to approach a random person reading her book in the line for Dunkin Donuts, and then in a crowded subway. Both people who approached me had not read the book yet, but were interested to hear my take on it. It’s so unfathomably rare for New Yorkers to strike up a conversation mid-commute on a Monday morning, but I swear it happened.
I was approached by two separate people in New York City, asking me about my book. A funny thing happened to me two days ago.
