Content warning: This article contains mentions of sexual violence.
Audiences have always had an ever-present tendency to explain a work of art by investigating the life of its author. This is evidenced by our interest in finding the biographical roots of the lover figure in so many works of art, from Catullus’ love poetry to Taylor Swift’s songs.
Having studied literature since I was 17, I was under the impression that I was immune to this pitfall. After all, I had been taught throughout high school and much of university to ignore this biographical urge and focus on the words on the page. This did not, however, stop me from attending an event called Stories Spark Change: Roxane Gay in Conversation with Eternity Martis, assuming it would give me some insight on Hunger, a memoir by Gay that I had read and loved in high school.
In some ways, though, my high expectations for the event were not that surprising. Debates on the ‘death of the author’ phenomenon have by no means fizzled out, but they have acquired a distinctly moral dimension championed by the political left. Is it okay for me to listen to a controversial artist like Chris Brown? Does my answer change if the artist is dead, like in the case of Michael Jackson?
While those examples are not directly applicable to Gay’s work, where you land on them will probably determine how much you think an author’s intention and circumstances should influence your interpretation of their work. My belief that the event would change how I interpreted Hunger showed where I stood on the issue: an artist cannot be, nor should they be, separated from their art.
In reality, the event did little to change my interpretation of the memoir. It showed instead that my insistence on connecting Gay to her art had actually resulted in me conflating her with her memoir. I had formed a parasocial bond with her — if not on the basis of her experiences, then on the basis of her passionate writing.
Gay seemed intimately aware that this was a potential consequence of publishing her story. In response to a question about boundaries, she noted that people who had read her work would sometimes try to share their own stories with her, expecting her to help them carry it.
“They feel like they know you,” Gay said. “And it’s like, ‘No, you don’t actually. You know what I’ve chosen for you to know.’ ”
There were a myriad of other moments that also made me pause, like hearing Gay’s dog bark in the background every once in a while. Those brief seconds of authenticity reminded me that Gay is a person outside of Hunger — that her memoir and even the event are performances of experience.
Returning to the book after the event, I realized that Gay had offered much of the same disclaimer in the chapter where she writes of her sexual assault. She writes, “Something terrible happened, and I wish I could leave it at that because as a writer who is also a woman, I don’t want to be defined by the worst thing that has happened to me.”
And yet how would most people summarize Hunger? I now feel ashamed that for years, in motivating other people to read the book, I described it as the story of a woman who was sexually assaulted and coped with that assault, in part, through food. I can no longer, in good conscience, summarize it this way.
Just as it is shallow to reduce the artist to their art, I believe it to be similarly shallow to reduce the ideas of a work to their biographical roots. Though Gay’s story is her own, her work is too sprawling and raw to be limited to her intention or circumstances.
Admittedly, this opinion was difficult for me to come to. On some level, it feels wrong to argue that readers should reinterpret and recontextualize the harrowing things that Gay describes and apply them to their own lives. But I think people do this regardless of whether we decide it to be moral or not, and, to some extent, it is a waste of Gay’s authorial energy to not expand on the connection readers feel to her writing.
When I decided to attend this event and reread Hunger, I expected the experience to be practically objective in nature. I have come out as nonbinary since the last time I read the work, and I no longer felt like I had a right to the traumas she talks about experiencing as part of girlhood. Instead, I connected to Gay’s work in an even more profound way than I had when I read it as a teenager, because it became a rediscovery of traumatic memories I had repressed while coming to terms with a new identity.
I cannot relate to much of Gay’s experience, but by remembering that her work exists beyond her and that it does not define her, I am able to find a part of her writing that helps me heal. And in doing so, I am able to turn Hunger into something that is more meaningful to me than any biography could ever be.
