PEOPLE.com
Growing up in suburban Nebraska, Roxane Gay was a happy, straight-A student from a loving family. But at age 12, she was gang-raped by a boy she adored and a group of his friends — and her life was upended overnight.
“Everything I thought I knew was shattered,” says Gay, 42, of the brutal assault in a cabin in the woods in 1986.
Mired in self-loathing, she did not tell her parents — or anyone else — what happened. Instead, she found herself in a shame-spiral in which food became solace and overeating turned her lanky body into a “fortress.”
“I didn’t ever want to be over-powered again,” explains Gay, who reached 577 lbs. at her heaviest. “I thought if I’m fat, boys won’t come after me. I wanted to make myself bigger.”
Now, in an astonishingly candid new memoir, Hunger, excerpted exclusively in this week’s issue, Gay details her emotional journey and examines “how much suffering is born of sexual violence.”