I try to hover over the toilet because I don’t want it to break beneath me. In public toilets, I manoeuvre into cubicles.
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I avoid walking with other people as often as possible because walking and talking at the same time is a challenge. Sometimes, they pretend not to know, and sometimes, it seems like they are genuinely that oblivious to how different bodies move, as they suggest we do impossible things like go to an amusement park or walk a mile up a hill to a stadium. If I am with friends, I cannot keep up, so I am constantly thinking up excuses to explain why I am walking slower than they are, as if they don’t already know. There are things I want to do with my body but cannot. I feel like people are staring at me sweating and judging me for having an unruly body that dares to reveal the costs of its exertion. When I walk for long periods of time, my thighs and calves ache.
#ROXANE GAY HUNGER TOUR SKIN#
It’s about how I feel in my skin and bones. Feeling comfortable in my body isn’t entirely about beauty standards. What I know and what I feel are two very different things. I’m a feminist and I know that it is important to resist unreasonable standards for how my body should look. It would be easy to pretend I am just fine with my body as it is. I don’t hate myself in the way society would have me hate myself, but I hate how the world all too often responds to this body.
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My memories of the after are scattered, but I remember eating and eating and eating so I could forget, so my body could become so big it would never be broken again. When it was all over, I pushed my bike home and I pretended to be the daughter my parents knew, the straight-A student. I remember that they had nothing but disdain for me. I remember their smells, the squareness of their faces, the weight of their bodies, the tangy smell of their sweat, the surprising strength in their limbs.
#ROXANE GAY HUNGER TOUR HOW TO#
They were boys who were not yet men but knew, already, how to do the damage of men. You may learn how to be the life of the party so that people are too busy laughing to focus on the elephant in the room I was 12 when I was raped by Christopher and several of his friends in an abandoned cabin in the woods where no one but those boys could hear me scream. She has a reason to like her, a reason that not everyone can also say.There was a boy. After seeing her backstory, I see she has been through it all and isn’t just saying she likes Katniss just because. But after reading tonight and finding out the backstory of Gay, I see it a lot differently now. When I first read the article in class, I saw it as a dumb, non-credible source. Gay had gone through so much suffering that may have been avoided if she had the strength to stop it before it ever happened. Gay respects that and wishes she had that courage when she was younger, but didn’t. Katniss is shown as a strong women that is able to face the challenges brought before her.
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The reason Gay went into such detail, and great length, about her at a younger age was to show how she connects with Katniss.
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In the end, I found this an enjoyable read. But it seemed to drag on a little too long, making it feel like it was two works slapped together. I see where Gay was going with this, as she was explaining how she relates to Katniss and looks up to her as a character. I even went and flipped a few pages back to make sure I was still reading the same piece. Then the second half of the writing felt as if I was reading something else. If I had to say, the beginning of the reading seemed more like a critic writing their review on the book rather than anything. It starts off with the author, Roxane Gay, giving her thoughts on The Hunger Games, why she loved it, and how it relates to her. This reading is a lot different from all the over ones we have read yet.