As she kept the rape a secret, food became her saviour. “Every body has a history” she writes in the first chapter, which, comprising a scant 21 words, gets directly to the point. “Here, I offer mine.” What follows is a searing examination of the forces that have shaped her body - which, after being gang raped by her boyfriend and several of his friends at age 12, she fought desperately to protect. For me, Roxane Gay’s Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, is one of those books. You aren’t the same person you were when you started reading it, and you won’t be again. Every now and then you read a book that changes you.
