In Hunger, Roxane Gay uses her past to explain how she used food to cope with trauma and all the ways that coping mechanism affected her life. Gay is able to trace her unhealthy eating habits to a traumatic childhood incident. Along the way, she makes a case for acceptance and loving people as they are without expecting them to change.

Gay is able to drive home the trauma of her gang rape with her vivid description. For example, she explains how Christopher—a pseudonym she uses for the friend who brought her to the cabin where it happened—spit in her face after he was done. Though it's wrenching to read, it helps the reader better identify with Gay and empathize with the shame and pain she felt as a 12-year-old Catholic girl who didn't have a good understanding of what exactly was happening.

That shame is internalized because she is unable to speak of the rape for most of her life. Instead, she keeps it to herself and begins to eat for both protection and comfort. As she grows larger, her weight affects her everyday life and her view of herself. She details her interactions with potential partners and her feelings about the choices she makes clearly. This allows readers who have never had an eating disorder to see her life through the lens of her experience.

Gay writes about her life from her birth into a loving family with two brothers to her more recent years as a professor and author. She was not able to love herself for most of her life, she explains. Doing so took a lot of time and required that she set boundaries even with the people she loves. For example, she couldn't visit her family without them policing her food intake. She had to explain to them why that wasn't healthy for their relationship and work with them to improve.

Hunger isn't just about Gay's experience, though. She also discusses the way society views fat people—especially fat women—and how damaging it can be to be dismissed for her size. One story she tells is of her best friend offering her chips before a plane ride; Gay had to refuse, saying that women who look like her can't eat chips in public. Her experiences serve as examples of concepts she seeks to share with her readers. It helps make the consequences of the rejection fat women face clearer. 

Hunger is a memoir of Roxanne Gay’s life spanning from her childhood to present day. At 12 years old Gay was lured into a cabin by a friend and gang raped. She vividly describes the traumatic event and the impact it has had on her upbringing. She attributes this incident to her relationship with food. She begins eating to bury feelings of pain and guilt following this event. She traces how her weight has impacted her relationship with herself and everyone else ever since. Ultimately, it is a story of a woman’s struggle with overeating and society’s hatred of it. Gay attacks what she calls the “weight-loss industrial complex.” She describes how manipulative and dangerous these diets and their ideologies can be. She explains how invasive and public her health became as random strangers would reach into her shopping cart to control her purchases. She even had to set boundaries with her parents so that she could enjoy time with family and not feel shamed for her eating choices. While her past writing dives head first into difficult topics, Hunger addresses the moments in Gay's life that are most vulnerable for her.