Eating disorders as survival tools in Roxane Gay’s Hunger, A Memoir of (My) Body

Abstract

Women have historically been subject to dominant patriarchal discourses that have contributed to the exercise of power, violence, and control over their bodies. This work aims to show through the analysis of the autobiographical memory Hunger: Memories of my body by Roxane Gay how food and eating disorders symbolize a survival tool against cultural hegemony since they enable the creation of a symbolic language through which women can express their rejection of an oppressive system while externalizing the experience of traumatic experiences. This work presents eating disorders as an instrument of rebellion, protest and resistance with which women can face the discrimination and oppression present in the patriarchal system, but at the same time insists on the importance of finding an alternative language of their own, far from of eating disorders as they have very serious physical and emotional consequences.