I feel my own version of what she feels, and I went through my own version of what she went through. Because I have these privileges, I could sneer at her with my societally-approved advantages, but I can’t. Unlike Gay, I was not gang-raped when I was twelve years old. As a Jew, my people have a history of persecution, but I can pass. Sure, I could drop twenty or thirty pounds to look more like the mannequins in the department stores, but I can pass. It’s incredibly honest, so much so that I couldn’t look away, even as I squirmed in recognition. Hunger is about what happened to her, how she got this way, and what it’s like to live the way she lives. In addition to being an accomplished author and journalist, Roxane Gay is, in her own words, a morbidly obese woman of color. Beyond that, if you want to know more, you’ll have to keep reading. I finished reading it about ten days ago, and I cannot stop thinking about it.ĭoes it have anything to do with comics? Well, Gay wrote a mini-series for Marvel. It kept me glued to my couch for a long weekend. Throw over your man, I say, and come.Roxane Gay’s new book, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body is a knock-out of a book. “Look here Vita - throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads - They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. I must, then, repeat continually that we are for ever sundered: – and yet, while I breathe and think I must love him.” I believe he is of mine – I am sure he is, – I feel akin to him, – I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. “He is not to them what he is to me,” I thought: “he is not of their kind. Go on, you old bee charmer, tell me a good tall tale.” “You’re just a bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode. Whatever happen, whatever you do, I love you.” “I saw no shadow of another parting from her.” “And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.” Gay-ish quotes from classic literature that sum up how Nicole and self feel about this news: We’ll tell you how as The Butter launch approaches. You may follow her on Twitter here, if you do not already (I highly recommend it).Ĭan I pitch The Butter? Yes. Believe me when I tell you that we know she is too good for us.) She is also the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, Bad Feminist, and Hunger, forthcoming from Harper in 2016.īoth An Untamed Stateand Bad Feministhave made it onto the New York Times bestsellers list, incidentally. Roxane Gay’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, West Branch, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Rumpus, Salon, and many others.
Would you care to be more specific? Roxane says it will “focus on cultural criticism and personal essays that make readers think and feel.” What will this particular vertical be like? WHATEVER ROXANE WANTS IT TO BE.
If you were raised Christian, think of it as part of a Trinity eternally begotten of the Toast, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Toast. Wait, is FX owned by FOX? I ought to know this. What is a vertical, exactly? Oh, it’s a bit hard to describe - it’s part of our company, but it’s also its own thing. She’s officially starting on October 15th, and there will be plenty more details to come, but in the meantime please join me in dancing excitedly about the room.
You cannot possibly understand how bad I am at keeping news to myself, nor what a toll keeping this particular news took on my frail and mortal frame, but please share in my joy: Roxane Gay is coming to The Toast, where she will be running our very first vertical, The Butter.