There is almost a disconnect between Roxane Gay and her body, hence the use of parentheses in the title. The memoir is the story of her body but it seems to have taken on an identity all of its own, because as far as Gay is concerned, there is her, and there is the person she is assumed to be because she is super-morbidly obese. For this reason she finds it hard to fully connect with her physical appearance. Stating that she found it far harder to write this book than any other she has written before or since, Gay uses the memoir to tell the story of her experiences of sexual abuse at a very young age, and her use of food, and weight gain, to insulate herself from the possibility of that every happening again. Eventually, Gay's obesity was a suit of armor that she believed would repel men away so quickly that she would never have to deal with any interest from them, thereby keeping herself safe.
The book also deals with Gay's experiences of being a super-sized person in a regular-sized world, The book was, for the most part, favorably reviewed, although many were offended by Gay's contention that the world was set up to put a dent in the self esteem of the morbidly obese. Nonetheless, her brutally honest way of explaining how emotion can often create a physical manifestation of itself, especially when a person has undergone a trauma, was praised for its accessibility and deliberately non-scientific approach that makes it possible for readers without a background in psychology or counselling to understand. Some critics also disliked her "woe is me" narrative, and the way in which she blamed society for not adapting everything to the exact needs of someone her size.
Gay's first novel, An Untamed State, was published in 2014, the same year that Bad Feminist, a collection of essays that all appeared previously in The New York Times, was published in one volume, and quickly became a best-seller. The book, although written from a feminist perspective, also walks outside of the lines laid down by some of the more pervasive feminist voices, such as Julie Burchill, the left-wing feminist grande dame of Spectator magazine, whose view of Gay's memoir was also rather negative and scathing.
Gay is currently a contributing writer for the New York Times and a visiting professor at Yale University.
