In the beginning of the book, Gay calls Hunger the 'most difficult writing experience of life.' Unfortunately, at times her struggle to understand her experience is all too apparent. At her heaviest, Roxane Gay weighed 577 lbs. Informed by cultural norms, Gay understood that obese women were unattractive, so she ate in excess to ensure she would never again be brutalized. The rape, Gay recounts, left a void inside her, and she used food to fill that void. In the 'after' the reader watches Gay collapse into a traumatized shell of her former self.

Throughout the book, Gay refers to her life in two parts: 'before' and 'after.' In the 'before,' Gay is a normal, if awkward, preteen girl from a loving family. For Gay, this journey began at age 12 when she was raped by a classmate and a group of his friends.