Good evening. Roxanne is the best time selling author of an untamed faith, difficult women and marveled world she is a contributed opinion writer to the New York Times and has also written for time, the nation, salon and more. Her fiction has been selected for the best stories of 2012 and of the best american mystery stories of 2014 among other anthologies. In her new book, roxanne delivers an honest memoir of food, selfimage and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself. Joining on stage this evening is cofounder and cohost of the podcast. [applause] thanks so much for joining us today im so excited to talk to you. This book is amazing. I knew i wasnt going to be disappointed. This is perfect. I was struck by so many things when i read the book. It was emotional and i was reminded it helps us be a little more brave and yeah, can you talk to us about what was hard . It was a difficult book to write. I sold it before black feminists came out and i was thinking about what i wanted my next project to be. I thought the book i want to write the least is a book about fatness and then i realized its the book i should write the most. My dad told me write something no one else is doing if you want to achieve success for people write about this from the perspective of already having figured out their bodies and having lost a lot of weight. You see a woman on the front of her book and her formerly fat pants that says i did it and i just thought i cant write that book yet but i want to write that book so why dont i told the story of my body today without apology, just an explanation. This is my fat body and what it is like to be in this world in this body. One of the things i enjoy the rooted in the buck in the perspectives we choose there is a narrative about how we are supposed to react and you were able to shift the conversation and change it to say there is such a thing as health but heres where i am and various such a thing as whatever that fat beauty empowerment complex is but heres where im at and also the conversation around choosing to call yourself a victim or a survivor. It was so important that you did that. What reactions are you hearing . It comes out tomorrow so i havent gotten many reactions. A lot of people have made assumptions based on what they think the book is going to be about. They think it is about selfloathing and so on but that isnt what it is about. Its about what happens when you are beyond lane bryant because often times when people talk about body positivity h they can still go to the mall and buy an outfit but what happens when you are bigger than that and you find yourself no longer able to shop in the store for clothing . And when the world simply does not accommodate you. Its a story we dont hear unless you are watching tlc and one of their horrific shows like my 600pound wife where then it becomes a spectacle and this idea of being shamed and we have a doctor but im sure is well intended but put people on a 1200calorie a day diet even though they say it has a 5 success rate and i think that lets us know how pervasive it is that people are like i have a 95 chance of failing at this but im going to mutilate my body anyway so i just wanted to talk about all that and say i believe in fat positivit this pd held in a precise but im also not thrilled to be this particular size. I met the health at every size founder last weekend she weighs about 90 pounds. So i was like really . I mean shes wonderful. Shes a medical doctor and i love that shes taking up this cause because people will listen to her far more than anyone else because of her business, and she even says that to me. But i just thought wow, okay shes super thin. She will never know what its like to live in this body. Sure, being healthy at every size. So yeah im all for it but im also just me and trying to be as realistic as i can. Another thing i like about the book is that confronted me with my own history with wade and where i think i am. I think ive been big since i was in the sixth grade, never thought about it too much and also went through a sexual trauma but i never connected those dots in the way that few layouts so much. I just realized how much of the conversation about Weight Centers around fat people being miserable all the time which is not necessarily true [inaudible] [laughter] mom and dad, cover your ears. We are here to talk about all these things and also realized the conversation doesnt have to send her around thinness. You can be fat and live a full life. We have relationships, families, jobs. And people love to tell us it doesnt matter what you achieve as long as you are fat your achievements dont count for anything. And i definitely wanted to write against a narrative. I hear it constantly because i live in the world but i also know i live a full life. This isnt the be all to end all or the ruling factor but people want us to be miserable and want us to punish ourselves because they feel like that is a problem that needs to be sold and we should be constantly apologizing for our bodies. Its not about them. Its very odd. A man came up to me to give diet advice which i thought was hilarious. I get so much nutritional advice. I was in chicago during an event and a man came up to me and gave me his name and number but not in a good way. He was like im a nutritionist. I dont know if you know this but exercise is required to lose weight. [laughter] youre right, i have a personal trainer but i dont know anything. Thank you. Just walk two or three times a week. And i could tell he was being kind and earnest and so thats why i havent written him back because my First Response was not kind but it was earnest. [laughter] like earnestly go fuck yourself. [laughter] its very frustrating. One of the things you are able to talk about so well is when your body is not the norm. If people think its okay to comment about it they think its okay to shove you absolutely they think they can treat you like a garbage can. Thats all you are. I cant tell you the number of times in public i get shoved and people dont even apologize. Its like a force field. The body does become part of the public conversation and public property and thats extremely frustrating because people read like one Magazine Article in people and think that suddenly they are an expert and everybody is a doctor. Everybody is a doctor. Not a day goes by people dont give me statistics but i know already because i live in the world and ive read a book. I want to shake all of those people for you. [laughter] and its not kindness but i think they perceive it as kindness. They think that they are doing you a favor presenting you with information that you somehow had never seen an oprah commercial or open about or have seen a Television Show where the diet culture is consistently being thrown at us. They think somehow we blocked it all out which, like that sort of crazy. Another thing you do so well is open up the conversation around shame people have. Its lifting little by little. Like what were you trying to get to . I didnt have an end goal. Its this thing people dont really want to talk about it. They know your fact that they whisper around it or they have the audacity to say youre not fat. [laughter] no, i think i am. They check to minimize your reality oregon they just projected a narrative that is full of assumptions so i just want to end back and say this is not the truth. As i wrote the book i found myself taking a hard look at myself and the choices i have made over the years and how once i am as fixed as im ever going to be i was comfortable in a certain way of being and it was all a new site that was useful in being able to articulate th that. I know that you make sure you can accommodate different kind of bodies and that is something a lot of people think about. I ask a venue if they have Seats Available with no arms for people who cant fit in those seats but nobody thinks about that. Anybody beyond that shouldnt leave the house and i do think accessibility is important and i would ask they have accessible seating for everyone and we will see how it goes. We see the statistics the fashion industry doesnt cater to the body size of women. There is a resistance to accepting the reality. Its going to take the financial imperative enough people are going to have to have the economic power to demand that we design seats that are more than 17 inches which is the average size. All too often whether its furniture or clothing designers want to design for a size two and you will see how bad most designers are. This is one of the final frontiers of the discrimination and i dont know what its going to take i found myself speaking really protective of you like i know what shes trying to say that so many people are not going to get it. You engage in this its interesting when people read the book and still learn nothing from it. I did in an interview with a woman ive done interviews with before and she was trying to connect with me on my level. [laughter] but she was a white lady and she was like so, describe your body to me and i was like im tall coming and they knew what she was trying to get me to do in this selfloathing but thats not how i think of myself because i do need to get through the day. Later she came back and said discard your body to me and i lost my ship and i said no maam. I hope they air it. [laughter] i had a witness. My publicist was there and she was like yes it is as bad as you think it is. Every review so far ive tried n the book with my highest weight was and i wrote it just to give people context because people are bad about guessing the numbers of what we looks like. They think every woman weighs 140 pounds or 110 pounds in every single review has mentioned it. Im just like fuck me, really . And people still read weightloss memoirs like its almost dangerous to write about your weight or what it is youre trying to do. They will use it as a manual. Its very frustrating. People want answers or they want it to be a cautionary tale. What is the number where i need to start panicking and just do over. Its interesting and coverage has been well intended but interesting. Usa in the book how specifically its a memoir about your body and where you are at right now. The way that its written into the focus is very interesting. I always told myself okay i will write a memoir and i thought if i have a focus that will bitwill be easier so i was deliberate about making sure the date focused on my body because that is what the book is about and so as i got deeper into the book, whenever i felt lost i thought how does this relate to your body and that helped me stay on course. If you dont follow roxanne on social media platform you are a fool because thats where you get a lot of good stuff for free. [laughter] but there were parts of reading this book you spend so much time online talking about strangers in internet chat rooms and being a worker and a contributor to see the realization of that goes back to how generous you are letting people in on the level they can relate to. Ive been online probably since 1996. I went to college and my parents gave me a macintosh and back then we would use a modem to get online and i would take this big computer and laptops didnt exist and i would tie up the phone for 16 hours at a time and i would just talk because i was so shy and afraid of the world and they had a very vivid imagination so i would go on Message Boards back in the day. You could talk to a 40 year old guy and not get murdered which is not the case anymore. Im a writer and like to not have to be facetoface interactions. So now you see something ive been doing in 96. I should hope im good at twitter at this point. [laughter] i shed a tear when i turned 40 because i never made the 40 under 40 list. Can you stretch it to 4242 . Part of your success is that youve been doing it forever. You can flail at something and when your opportunity comes there is no syndrome. I know meritocracy doesnt exist but i tell myself cream rises to the top and that is how i got through the many years of obscurity and not being very good and i just got better and better. I was fortunate enough to be raised in the kind of advantages to putting in the position like its not an accident. I very much acknowledged that at all times but i put in the wor works. If im an overnight sensation its the longest in the history. It took some time. Can we talk about your family . I think for me there is as an immigrant hearing how close you all are and your parents have been there at crucial moments even when you didnt have the kind of vocabulary and encourage because we hear about the tension. It was always in our teens theres nothing good happening. We didnt have those tensions for whatever reason. I have parents that were willing to appear and even when i didnt want to be. A boss me around and give me advice like what are you doing did you have dinner yet. I got this. [laughter] i live on my own and everything. But its a blessing. My american friends are often surprised like your parents call you how often . Everyday. [laughter] it just is what it is. And i think often times and the marginalized culture you have people and family becaus in famd knows Everything Else is working against you so thats one of the reasons we have a very close family. I think you are in the top five. Theres a little bit of a waiting list. [laughter] you talk about also earlier how you have to delay writing the book because like we talked about how hard it was. How blessed are you that you can take your time writing the book and the relationship that you have im very lucky because i would keep making up these deadlines and after the first i couldnt help they knew i was lying but they left me. I just really dragged my feet writing the book because it was so difficult to be open. I was dreading whatever is going to happen the next two weeks very much so im going to ignore as much of it as i can. I didnt want to face it so i just thought do you really want to pay back the advance . Thats a lot of money. You said youre going to write the book just write the book, so i did finally but i was lucky to be supported by an editor and a publisher and my agent in particular in the years of delay never gave me any pressure. Books take time and i was given the time. Oprah winfrey, i will agree with her. She will send you a loaf of bread. [laughter] something from her farm. I have a farm called whole foods. She posted something she raised me and abuse issues, her farming is still fraudulent. It is so i cannot get enough of oprah farming. And all her ways she is in her kitchen cooking. I am like, oh, girl, you are not cooking a damn thing. And if you are, let me show you how to be rich. Just invite me over and i will watch you do the show. I dont know what she would say but part of her would be like no, i genuinely believe this isnt my best self and she would give some tv show oprah speak about living my best life and my best life is in a smaller body, not because of societal pressure but selfactualization. If i had 1 billion that selfactualization enough for me. I would rub myself in dollars. It is fine. A great note an end on. Roxane gay, thank you, thank you. [applause] i love that you are a rock star. Here is what is going to happen was we are going to take a couple questions from the audience and by questions i mean real questions, dont tell is a long story or we dont need your name or is that whole thing. A lot of people want to know thing so we will take just a couple in the audience and then roxane gay will be signing books which you already know about so raise your hand. Hi, how are you . I didnt get too far in the book yet but what was the moment when you told your parents and your family what happened . I didnt. They know. That would be uncomfortable. A little magazine called Time Magazine published an article about my last Nonfiction Book and that opened up the familiar conversation. I am very passiveaggressive. Im not proud of it. If i could do it over i would do it differently but it is hard to find the words so many years later. Just cross my fingers that they never hear about the book, who is going to read a book about feminism . Another question. Roxanne, just yesterday we discussed with somebody biome. Are you familiar with that . I just learned about it yesterday. It pertains to us not being the sum total of our parts but each of our parts having their own things that inform us but i realize as im speaking this might be a mixed question because if you dont know about the biome but there are new therapies for example for people with Crohns Disease and it changes us. I was curious with your relationship to your body if you feel that it is informed not just you of your self but zu, informs your writing as well. Of course it informs my view of myself. That is unavoidable. And it is shaped some of my writing but not all of my writing because i was writing before i became fat. But you only know how to narrate the world how you know how to narrate the world, you cant separate out part of your identity and say that doesnt inform everything i am informs how i write and how i see myself. Is that on . Where are you . My name is sierra. You are one of my favorite people. I guess in regards to someone like you and i battling with baron internal issues, being overweight, finding comfort in food. My question is when did you feel when did it click for you that i dont have to find comfort in food anymore and i can be comfortable with my body. With that personal moment, the world judging me for my weight. When i get there i will let you know. I am still a work in progress. I am not fully there yet but in the past we 6 months i have come to as much peace as i have ever been with my body and my food is just thinking about my relationship to food and things like that. It is not a traditional narrative where i have come to a magical realization and everything is fixed. That is not what the book is about so i am not there yet. For many women in this world i dont know that we ever fully get there because i dont think we are allowed. Time for two more questions before we move into the signing portion. Right up here. Hi. First thing, last i heard you talk was in 2015 as a keynote speaker and i fell in love with you after that day. Second, right now i am in college, you talked a lot in bad feminist how you felt your peers saw you as the affirmativeaction person. I feel that is that aside, my weight is keeping me from realizing my academic potential. Although i try my best and i get grades and do everything i can i feel like my opinions and work is not as valid as my peers because of the way my body looks externally. How do you maneuver that. How do you possibly get over that syndrome that has to do with your body . You have to make peace with that also have to recognize you cant control how other people perceive you and that is one of the things i always had to do as a black woman in the academy, to know people might discount my ideas and my thinking and my research but that is not about me. That is about them. No matter how insecure you are you have 2 make sense of confidence that you belong in the academy and your ideas are