It's the story of a black woman who learns to “believe in the value of my voice both in spite of and because of my body,” one who, as a consequence of what she's endured, has great empathy for others. “As a fat woman, I often see my existence reduced to statistics,” Gay explains, as we live in a world that cruelly propagates the myth that, “no matter what material successes we achieve, we cannot be satisfied or happy unless we are thin.”Īt the beginning of the book, she warns her readers that this “is not a story of triumph” – specifically it's “not a weight-loss memoir” – but it's actually something far more inspirational than that.
It's also the equally hard-to-read exposé of what life is like for someone who's “three or four hundred pounds overweight.” Both the physical limitations – the “reality” of which is being “trapped in a cage” – and the mental boundaries this entails.
