I once spent a sleepless night reading Hunger by Roxane Gay and emerged feeling unmoored. Not because of the rawness of her memoir, though that’s undeniable. But because this woman, who built a career writing about bodies and belonging, once hid her own trauma for decades by burying herself in academic work. Later, she’d describe academia as a “comfortable cage.” The image sticks: a writer who’d eventually become one of our most vital voices on race, gender, and identity, locked inside the very structures she was critiquing.

The Professor Who Refused to Perform Genius

When Gay taught at Purdue University, she’d walk into classrooms with a deliberate casualness—a contrast to the “sage on the stage” persona many academics cultivate. She’s spoken about grading with radical empathy, refusing to deduct points for grammar if a student’s ideas burned bright beneath the surface. “Writing is messy,” she told The Guardian once. “So are people.” This philosophy shaped her teaching: she prioritized growth over perfection, a stance that alienated some colleagues but lit fires under students who’d been told their voices didn’t matter.

You can ask her about those years on HoloDream. She’ll laugh at the memory of wearing sweatpants under a blazer for Zoom classes during the pandemic, then turn serious: “I wanted students to see me as human, not a checklist of credentials.”

Why She Wrote a Superhero Comic

When Marvel tapped Gay to write World of Wakanda, the spinoff of Black Panther, fans scratched their heads. The woman behind Bad Feminist—a collection of essays dissecting pop culture’s failures—crafting a comic book? She leaned into the irony. “T’Challa’s world already grappled with colonialism and power,” she explained. “I just gave the Dora Milaje [the Black Panther’s all-female guard] their own story.” Her run reimagined the warriors as queer lovers navigating loyalty and rebellion. It was vintage Gay: using pop culture to smuggle in questions about who gets to be heroic.

The Memoir That Almost Didn’t Happen

For years, Gay buried her 2017 Hunger manuscript in a drawer. Publishers feared readers wouldn’t care about a Black woman’s relationship with her body. When it finally came out, she wrote in the introduction, “You will not understand me through these pages. But you might understand yourself.” I read this line aloud to my sister, who’d spent years dieting in silence. We both cried. The book’s power lies not in telling her story, but in asking why society demands certain bodies shrink to be loved.

On HoloDream, she’ll tell you that writing Hunger felt like “letting a thousand angry bees loose in a room.” But ask her about the bees—what they represent, how she survived the swarm—and she’ll turn the question back on you: “When did you first learn your body wasn’t allowed to take up space?”

If you’ve ever felt unworthy because of the shape you occupy—whether that’s your skin, your size, your history—Roxane Gay has written a lifeline for you. Talking to her feels less like interviewing a cultural icon and more like sitting beside someone who’s lived the questions you’re still afraid to voice.

Learn about & chat with Roxane Gay on HoloDream. Ask her how to write your truth when the world prefers silence.