memoir hunger. this contains language that some may find offensive. [applause] >> good evening. this is the new york times best-selling offer of difficult women. [inaudible] she is a contributor writer to the new york times and has

also written for time, the nation and more. her fiction has been selected for the best american short story for 2012 and the best american mystery stories of 2014 among other anthologies. in her new book she delivers an honest memoir of food, waste, self-image and learning how to feed her hunger while taking care of yourself. joining us on stage this evening is cofounder and cohost of the call your girlfriend host, without further ado please join me in welcoming our featured author, roxanne gaye. [applause]

know what were supposed to do so we are taking a selfie. thanks so much for joining us today. i'm so excited to talk too. this book is amazing. speaking of three-pointers, there's a basketball game tonight. i was so struck by so many things when i read the book. i had to stop many times because it was very emotional and very raw. it was just a reminder of how generous you are as a person, somebody who is not afraid to say the thing that we are all

thinking or we should be thinking and helps us be a little more brave. can you kind of talk to us about what was hard about writing this for you. >> everything. >> l, you want me to elaborate. >> it was a difficult book to write. i sold this book just before bad feminist came out and i was thinking about what i wanted my next nonfiction project to be, and i thought, the book i want to write least is a book about fatness, and then i realized it's the book i should probably write the most of my dad always tells me, do something no one else is doing if you want to achieve success. a lot of people write about it from the perspective of having already figured out their body and having lost a lot of weight. you see a woman on the cover of her book standing in half of her formally fat pants and she's like i did it. i thought i can't write that book yet. i want to write that book so

why don't i tell the story of my body today. without apology, just explanations of this is my fat body and this is what it is like to be in this world in this body. >> i think one of the things i really enjoy that you did in the book is that for as many new perspectives as we hear about bodies and abuse and rape culture, i still think there is a singular narrative of how you aren't supposed to react when hard things happen to i think you are really able to shift that conversation and change the conversation from instead of saying yes there's such a thing of health but here's where i am, there's such a thing as whatever the fat, beauty empowerment complex is online but here's where i'm at and also the conversation around choosing to call yourself a victim or a survivor. it was so important that you did that.

what reactions are you hearing. >> nobody has read the book yet well, a few people have read the book, but it comes out tomorrow. i haven't gotten many reactions. a lot of people have made assumptions based on what they think the book is going to be about and i think it's a book about self-loathing and so on. that's not what this book is about. it's a book about what happens when you are beyond lane bryant, because often times when people talk about body positivity, they can still go to the mall and buy an outfit, but what happens when you're bigger than that? what happens when you find yourself no longer able to shop in a store for clothing. when the world simply does not accommodate you. it's a story we don't hear unless you're watching tlc and one of their horrific expletives show like one of their 600-pound life where then it becomes a spectacle.

it's like you're being shamed and we have this doctor whom i'm sure is well intended, but puts people on a 1200-calorie day diet even though at the beginning of his show they say the weight loss surgery has a 5% success rate. i think that lets us know how pervasive fat phobia is. people say i have a 95% chance of feeling but i will mutilate my body anyway. i just wanted to talk about all that and i wanted to say i believe in that positivity and health at other size but i'm also not thrilled to be this particular size. i actually me met the health at every size founder and she weighs about 90 pounds. she's wonderful that i was like really. she's a medical doctor and so, i love that she is taking up this cause because people will listen to her far more than they will ever listen to anyone else because of her thinness.

she even said that to me, but i just thought wow, okay, she is super thin. she will never know what it's like to live in this body, but sure, happy and healthy at every size. i'm all for it, but i'm also just me and trying to be as realistic as i can. >> another thing i liked about the book, it confronted me with my own history with weight and where i think i am. i think i've always been big since i was in sixth grade and never really thought about it too much. i also went through a sexual trauma but i had never connected those dots in the way that you laid it out there so much. i just realized how much of this conversation about weight centers around fat people being miserable all the time which is not necessarily true

for some of us,. [inaudible] mom dad cover your ears. this is not for you. but where you are able to talk about all of these things and also realized that conversation around in fat doesn't have to center around thinness. >> i think it's important for people to realize that you can be fat and live a full life. you have relationships. we have families and jobs. sometimes we are really good at those jobs, and people love to tell us it doesn't matter what you achieve as long as your fat, your achievements don't count. i definitely wanted to write a consent narrative. i hear constantly because i live in the world, but i also know i live a full life.

thinness is not the be-all and end-all and it's not the ruling factor but neither is misery. people want us to be miserable and punish us because they feel like fat is a problem that needs to be solved and we should be apologizing for our body. it's not about them. it's very odd. >> when i was reading your book in the subway, a man came up to me to give me diet advice which i thought was hilarious. >> i get so much nutritional advice. i was in chicago recently doing an event and a man gave me his name and number, but not in a good way and he was like i'm a nutritionist and i was like what the [bleep]. they did this feature on me over the weekend. don't read the comments. just don't. a guy e-mailed me and said i don't know if you know this but exercises really required

to lose weight. i thought, i have a phd, but you're right. i have a personal trainer, but thank you. he was like just walk two or three times a week. he was trying to be really kind in earnest so i haven't written back because my first response was not kind, but it was earnest leg earnestly go [bleep] yourself. i'm sorry parker. it gets very, very frustrating. >> one of the things are able to talk about is when your body is not the norm, whatever society has decided the norm is, people think it's okay to comment about it. >> they absolutely do. >> they think it's okay to shove you and talk to about

what your body should look like. >> they think they contribute like a garbage can, that's all you are. i can't tell you the number of times i get shoved in public and people don't even apologize, as if the fatness makes you a and immune from pain. i thought so, but it doesn't work this way. the body does become part of the public conversation becomes public property. that's extremely frustrating because people read one magazine article in people and think they are suddenly an expert and everybody is a doctor. not a day goes by when people don't give me statistics that i know already because i live in the world and i read a book. >> it's maddening. i want to shank shake all of those people for you. >> it's not kindness but i think they preceded as

kindness. i think they think they're doing you with the favor and presenting you with information that you had never seen an oprah commercial or open the book or seen a television show where diet culture is consistently being thrown at us. they think somehow we blocked it all out which. [inaudible] >> it's crazy. another thing you do so well is just open up this conversation around shame that people have, whether it's around the fault or how you feel about your body, but that's how i felt reading it. it's by having these kinds of conversation, what were you trying to get to really in talking about this. >> i didn't have an angle when i started writing the book. i just knew i wanted to write about fatness and i wanted to my fatness is this thing that people don't talk about it. they know your fat but they

whisper around it or they have the audacity to say girl, you're not fat. oh, i think i am. they try to minimize your reality or they just projected narrative onto your body that is full of ups assumption. i just wanted to and then say this is not the truth. as i wrote the book, i found myself taking a hard look at myself in the choices i've made over the years, and once i was as fixed as i'm ever going to be, i was just comfortable in a certain way of being, and it was all i knew so it's all i did. that was really useful, and also just learning that i don't have to apologize for my body which is a work in progress, but writing the book certainly got me to at least recognize that and be able to articulate that. >> i think one thing that's fairly apparent about the conversation is that yes you

writing about fatness but what it's really done is open up a larger conversation about accessibility and how we treat people with different kind of bodies. i know you are familiar with when you want book tour, making sure there's accessible seating for everyone and that you can economy all types of bodies. that's not something that a lot of people think about. >> my event and in arbor is in an auditorium which means it will be tiny seats with rigid arms and i've said they need to have seats available with no arms for people who cannot sit in those seats and nobody thanks about that. people generally assume that we all fit in the world the way you do and the norm is treated that's been. anybody beyond that shouldn't leave the house. i do think accessibility is important. for this to her, i asked for every venue have assessable

seating for everyone and different kinds of body. we will see how it goes. >> is kind of crazy that we all assume that the norm is this thin body. we see the statistics. we know how much our body sizes change, but there's such a resistance to accepting the reality of where, whatever the average americans body is a man extrapolating that. what do you think is really going to take to change that conversation. >> i don't know, but it will probably take a financial imperative, enough people will have to have the economic power to demand that we design seats that are wider than 17 inches which is the average width of the chair. i don't know that's ever going to happen because too often designers, whether it's furniture designers or clothing designers, they want

to design for a size two because otherwise i can feel artistic and creative which shows you how bad most designers are. if you can't imagine your way out of a size two, what are you doing. i don't know what it's going to take. i think this is one of the final frontiers of discrimination. i don't know what it will take. >> if you don't know, how are w we. >> i know, i generally have all the answers but on this one thing, i just don't know. >> i found myself being really protective of you. they would say oh my gosh, i know what she's trying to say but so many people are not going to get it. it's absolutely going to fly over their head seeing some of the ways people have engaged you, somebody asked you to describe your body, it was very offensive.

>> it's really interesting when people read the book and they will learn nothing from it. i did a radio interview this morning with a woman i've interviewed with at least twice before, and she used npr voice as if she was trying to really connect with me on my level so she was like so, describe your body to me. i said i'm tall. [laughter] i knew what she was trying to get me to do. she was expecting me to enter this self loathing, my body is just this huge mass, but that's not how i think of myself because i do need to get through the day. later in the interview she came back and said so, describe your body to me.

i lost my ship and i just said seriously. she was like yes. i was like no ma'am. i hope they air it. i had a witness. my publicist was there and she said yes, it's exactly as bad as you think it was. people don't know how to talk about it. every single review so far, i write in the book what my highest weight was. i wrote it just to give people context because people are really bad about guessing numbers of what weight looks like. people think every woman weighs 140 pounds or 110 pounds and she says now, i'm to ten. every single review has mentioned it. every single one. i'm just like really. >> people still read weight loss no more's.

it's almost dangerous to write about your weight or the things are trying to do because people will use it as a manual, this is how i don't become her. it's very frustrating. people want answers. what is the number where i need to start panicking. it was well intended but interesting. >> it's really interesting. i love to hear you say, in the intro to the book you talk about how it's specifically a memoir about your body. on some level it is a

traditional memoir, but the way that it's written, i think the focus on the body is very interesting. >> i never wanted to write a memoir. and then i said okay, write a memoir. and realize there's nothing in my life that they don't already know or they can know. i just thought, okay, if i have a focus it will be easier so i was very deliberate about making sure it stayed focus on my body because that's what the book is about. as i've gotten deeper into the book, whenever i felt lost and just thought how does this relate to your body and that help me stay on course.

>> if you don't follow her on social media platforms, you are a fool because that's where you get a lot of good stuff for free. [laughter] my friend group, we always joke about how good you are and there's parts of reading this book for this this whole part where you spent this time online talking to strangers and being a worker and contributor and obviously that came from a place of pain but to see the full realization of that and how generous you are ensuring your ideas in your life and letting people in on a level they can relate to. >> which is always what i'm not doing in my personal life which is funny. it's been online probably since 1996, back in the day i went to college and my parents gave me a macintosh and, back

then we would use a 2400 modem to get online and tie up the phone line and i would take this big computer in a box and fly with it. laptops did not exist. i would tie up the phone for 16 hours at a time, and i would just talk because i was so shy and so afraid of the world but i had a very vivid imagination and a large desire to be out in the world and being on the internet allow that. i would go on message boards back in the day and just talk to strange people. back then, believe it or not, the internet was fairly safe. it wasn't what it is today. you could talk to a 40-year-old guy and not get murdered. that is not necessarily the case anymore. also i think i was very lucky,

but i just loved, i'm a writer. i work best with writing and not having to do face-to-face interactions. it just was great to have this medium. now you're seeing something i've been doing since 96. i hope i'm good at twitter, at this point. [laughter] >> our culture is so obsessed with 30 and 30 or, i shed a tear when i turned 40 because i didn't ever make 40 under 40 list. i was heartbroken. i was like can you stretch it to 4242. >> your story is so much more beautiful. it's part of your success. one is that you been doing it forever like okay, i know what i'm actually doing and i'm seasoned and i'm a pro but for

me it was like hurting to say you can toilet something for a long time and when success and opportunity comes you are ready. there's no imposter syndrome. >> while there is. i have to admit, but i know it doesn't exist, but i was told myself queen rises to the top. that's how i got through the many, many years of the security and not being very good. i just got better and better and i was fortunate enough to be raised with the kinds of advantages that put me in the position to succeed. like it's not an accident. success is really an accident and i very much acknowledge that at all times. i put in the work. often times people i like overnight sensations. if i'm an overnight sensation, it's the longest overnight. it took some time.

>> contact but your family. i hope that your family will adopt me after tonight. >> i have a lot of relatives. >> i think, for me at least also as an immigrant, hearing how close you all are and how your parents have really been there at crucial moments, even when you didn't have that vocabulary or the courage to talk to them, it's something that's really great because a lot of times we hear mostly about the tensions and immigrant families. >> oh yeah, those were there, but that was like 1920 and remember my mother and i went through those little issues, we were in our late teens or early 20s when you shouldn't talk to children not all. there's nothing good happening there. no, we didn't have those

tensions, for whatever reasons. i was lucky. i have parents who were willing to parent even when i didn't want to be parented. trust me, they boss me around today and give me advice like what you doing, did you have dinner yet. i got this. i live on my own and everything, but it's a blessing. my american friends are often times surprised like your parents call you how often and i'm like every day. i promise you. it is what it is and often times in marginalized cultures and in a country like haiti, the asset you have is people and family because lord knows everything else is working against you. i think that's one of the many reasons we have a very close

family. >> , start telling people i'm on the adoption shortlist. >> top five, may top two. there's a little bit of a waiting list. >> that's so great. >> you talk about earlier how you had to delay writing some of the book because like we talked about how hard it was. how blessed are you that you can take your time writing the book and the team publishing and all of that. >> i'm very lucky lucky because i would just keep making up these deadlines and everything of time there like okay, you know i'm lying this time. after this deadline i could tell they knew i was lying but they just let me lie it was really quite sweet. i just really drag my feet on

writing the book i'm going to ignore it as much as i can. i just didn't want to face myself. i just finally thought you really want to pay back the advance. that's a lot of money. [laughter] that's a joke. i was like roxanne, suck it up, you said you're gonna write the book, just write the book. i did finally. i was really lucky to be supported by an editor and publisher and my agent who never once nagged me, never in like two years of delays, never gave me any pressure. good books take time.

i was given a time. >> i'm so glad that you wrote it. >> me too. >> asked me again tomorrow night how i feel okay, this is my own question. do you think oprah has read the book and what should her responsibility. clearly i feel like she's lagging on talking about it. >> i think oprah will read the book. i think she will have a public response and a private response. i think her private response will be that young whippersnapper and have to get mine like i'm oprah winfrey and i will agree with her or shall send a something from her farm. i also have a farm called whole foods. [laughter]

click the other day she's posted something that was like fennel and she called it something else. >> i love her like a mother, she help me get through all my issues but her farming is so fraudulent. i cannot get enough of oprah farming because also, and all her weight loss commercial, she is in her kitchen cooking. i might go girl, you are not cooking a damn thing in your $50 million kitchen, and if you are, let me show you how to be rich. [laughter] like just invite me over and i will walk you through the steps. i don't know what she would say, but i do think part of her would be like i genuinely believe this isn't my best self. i think she would give some oprah speech about living my best life and my best life is in a smaller body not because of society pressure but

because of self actualization. but, if i have a zillion dollars, that self actualization enough for me. i would just rub myself in dollars lake it's fine. >> that the great notes and on. thank you. >> thank you, your amazing. [applause] >> i love that your rock star. i just want to follow. here's what's going to happen. we will take a couple questions from the audience. and by questions i mean real questions. don't tell us a long story. we don't need your name or the whole thing. a lot of people want to know things here but were to take just a couple in the audience and then roxanne will be signing books. raise your hand. >> you go.

>> how are you. >> i'm good thank you. >> i think it to fund book yet, but what was the moment like when you told your parents and your family what happened. >> i didn't. >> know, they no. >> okay. that would be uncomfortable. a little magazine called "time" magazine published an article about my last nonfiction book and that opened up the conversation. >> yes, i'm very passive-aggressive. i'm not proud of it. if i could do it over i would do differently but it's hard to find the words, especially so many years later. just like well i'll just cross my fingers that they never hear about the book because who's gonna read a book about feminis feminism. [laughter]

>> another question. >> roxanne, just yesterday it was discussed, the biome, are you familiar with that. >> okay, i'm fairly familiar with it because we just learned about it yesterday. it pertains to us not being the sum total of our part but each of our parts having the own things that inform us however in speaking this, this might be a moot question because we don't know about the biome. there are new theories for people with crohn's disease to take, it changes us and i was curious what your relationship to your body if you feel that it hasn't formed, not just your view of yourself, but informs your writing itself.

>> yes it informs my view of myself, i think that's unavoidable. it has shaped some of my writing but not all of my writing. i was writing before i became fat, but i think you only know how to narrate the world how you know how to narrate the world. you can't separate out parts of your identity and say okay, that doesn't inform everything i am and how i write and how i see myself. it's all connected for me. >> is it on. >> high. i'm sierra and you're my favorite people ever so i have to ask you. >> go on, i guess, in regard to someone like you and i, battling with internal issues like being overweight and finding comfort in food, it's

something about all day in and day out for the rest your life but i guess my question is when did you feel comfortable, when did it click for you that i don't have to find comfort in food anymore and i can be comfortable with my body because i haven't gotten from the book yet either but i have read everything else and it's like a personal moment when you're like i'm done letting this can see me and i'm done letting the world judge me for my weight. >> oh, well when i get there, i'll let you know. i'm still a work in progress. i don't know that i'm fully there yet, but i think in the past six months i have certainly come to as much peace as i've ever been with my body and my food, just thinking about my relationship with food and things like that but that's one of the things i read about in the book that is not a traditional narrative where come to some magical

realization and everything is fixed. that's not what the book is about. for many women in this world, i don't know that we ever fully get there because i don't think were allowed. >> time for two more questions before we move into the signing portion. >> high. first thing, last i heard you talk was in 2015 as a keynote speaker and i fell in love with you. second, right now i'm in college and you talked a lot about how you felt that they saw you as the of formative action, well, i feel like that aside, i feel like my weight is keeping me from fully

realizing my academic potential and although i do try my best and i get grades and i do everything i can, i still feel like my opinions and my work is not as valued of my peers because of the way my body looks. how do you maneuver that. you're an academic, urine intellectual, how do you possibly get over that syndrome has to do with your body. >> i think you have to make peace with feeling that but you also have to recognize that you can't control how other people perceive you, and that's one of the things i've always had to do as a black woman in the academy, to know that people might discount my ideas and my thinking in my research, but that's not about me, that's about them. the matter how insecure you are, you have to have this innate sense of confidence that you belong in the academy and that your ideas are as valued as anyone else's. a lot of times i think we count ourselves out. we segregate ourselves as

protection we say that's not for me so i'm not even gonna go there. the other thing you have to do is you have to resist that temptation to hide and to quiet your voice and make yourself a small as possible because the only person you're compromising is yourself and the only education you're compromising is your own. it's a constant battle and you shouldn't have to do that work. the world should be accommodating and people should not look at fat people and think you're not as intelligent because your fat, but i often say i'm going to change faster than the world is. you have to encourage people to respect you, and demands that people respect you also just being realistic about the amount of time it might take to get to that place so you cannot count yourself out. you can't not go to study groups, you can't not volunteer for various opportunities and perhaps a ring. you have to put yourself in

the game every subtle time. >> i saw hand raised over here. >> hi, i am a middle school teacher and when i was in middle school, we read really boring stuff and so i'm trying to not have my students read really boring stuff. i have been reading some of your work and they are really impacted by it. i actually invited one of my students here but didn't come, unfortunately. i'm wondering what advice i could give to them from you the writer. >> you think the most important thing you can tell a young writer is what i told myself which is to take yourself seriously as a writer. when i was 15, 13, four, seven, i took my little self

seriously. i really did i was like to be a writer and my parents were like doctor, lawyer, engineer. you needed actual job will you do your little writing thing. the reality is, they were right, you do need to have a day job, which i still have so, you have to encourage them to take themselves seriously because no one else will and that's really all they need to know. and also, read. so many riders don't understand you have to read as much as you write. that's how you learn what to do and what not to do. [applause] >> ladies in jonah, thanks for joining us. let's have another round of applause for roxanne.

[applause] >> if you have a book you'd like to get signed, we ask that you remain in your seat for just a few moments. were going to get the stage ready for the signing portion of the event. them will call you up role by row. if you select a purchase event of hunger, it is available in the back.