Knowing that a story needs to be told is a great motivator, even if telling a given story comes at a price. Writing Hunger has been the most difficult writing of my life, and it's the rawest and perhaps most necessary. We'll see how people take it. I always strive to write beyond personal catharsis because though I write first and foremost for myself, I do recognize that I need to look outward as much if not more than I look inward, so the reader has something with which they can engage.
Roxane GayI love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.
Roxane GayI think hunger is a natural state of being for most people. I mean, hunger is a desire - and you don't only have physical hunger, you have emotional hunger. A lot of my hungers are, in fact, emotional. I think a lot of fat people's hungers are emotional. There are things we very much want, and it can be so difficult to satisfy those hungers. Yet we try. We try so hard.
Roxane GayThe other day, I saw a blog post where a woman wrote about why she was unfollowing me and that made me feel incredibly self-conscious and embarrassed about my tweets. I also feel more exposed now that I've become a more visible writer but then I try to get over all that and just use Twitter the way I want.
Roxane Gay