Eat, Eat, Eat: Forced to overeat as a child, Sharon Suh finally learns for herself what is enough

A rich and powerful accounting of how the author's relationship to food developed through the lens of family adversity. 

"My struggle to feel my body and to discern whether I am hungry or full began quite young. I grew up in the 1970s, a second-generation Korean American in New York with a mentally ill mother who suffered from anorexia and bulimia. Throughout my formative years, she projected her body dysmorphia onto me, shaming me for my weight and my Asian features. I was never allowed to act on my own hunger or satiation because my mother always decided when I ate, how much I ate, and when I could stop. I was under her constant surveillance.

My mother had come of age during the Korean War, where starvation loomed large. After the war, she moved to the United States, where food was abundant. Eating as much as possible was necessary for survival in Korea, but here in her new home, thinness was a way to accumulate social capital. She left conditions of wartime starvation only to be met with a new kind of food deprivation, this time chosen. She starved herself for beauty and acceptance. In my mother’s eyes, Twiggy, the frighteningly thin British supermodel, represented the American ideal of feminine beauty."

 https://www.lionsroar.com/eat-eat/