Gay describes herself as 'self-obsessed,' but she has written a memoir that never slides into narcissism. Hunger is a walk in Gay’s shoes, a record of the private pain of the endless and endlessly mundane inconvenience of travel through a world set up for people who move through the world differently than you do. There is no successful therapy or diet or life-affirming meditation practice in Hunger.
Nor does she indulge in the promise of improvement or even inspiration. Confessional memoirs often seem to spring from a hope that when a writer shares a painful experience, readers will not only be informed, they will be inspired to overcome their own pain.
