When I started writing and drawing my second memoir, The Joy of Snacking, I had a completely different idea of what the book would be. I sold it after my first book, Murder Book, had just come out in 2021. I told my publishers this would be a sillier book and not nearly as long as Murder Book (Which ended up about 330 pages). It would be fun!! All about snacks and fun anecdotes from my life to go along with them. A year into the book everything had changed.
There was still the fun element and the snacks, but I was realizing this book had so much more to do with body trauma than I could have ever expected. It was about the painful relationship I’d had with myself for a very, very long time, but had been avoiding acknowledging. I was legitimately afraid of food when I was a kid, but I didn’t know how to explain that to anyone. I got labeled as picky and it followed me for seemingly forever, constantly being teased for my behavior. My days were scheduled around me avoiding food interactions with others and trying to keep myself “safe.”
Eventually it developed into a full blown eating disorder that I hid from everyone up until my mid 20s. I was never rail thin, I was never obese, I was living inside the secret hell of bulimia—oscillating between crazy restriction and binging—followed by gallons of self hate. Minus a few exceptions, movies and the media never talk about how quiet eating disorders can be, how they can go undetected for years, but that is of course the most common version of them. While part of me is still so nervous that this book is actually out now, I’m also so deeply proud of it. It’s scary, it’s funny, it’s the most honest I think I’ve ever been on the page. Below is an excerpt from my years in Catholic middle school, which I hated, but will be forever grateful for because it’s where I met Elaine. -
Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell is a comedian, author and New Yorker cartoonist. Her first memoir Murder Book won the Midwest Publishing awards for best graphic novel. Her second graphic memoir The Joy of Snacking comes out this October. You can follow her on Substack and IG @cartoonsbyhilary. Previously she took The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
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I love this! So interesting to hear how you thought about the different foods. I loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a kid until one day when my sandwich got smushed --then for years the very smell of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was nauseating to me. Girls in this country have so much shame about eating. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for this. My son was so picky as a child. His mother and I didn’t know what to do about him. Finding food that a picky kid will eat is like discovering a “spark bird” when embarking on a passion for birding. The spark food for our son turned out to be lo mein noodles. Once we discovered that, we branched out from there into a similar taxonomy of foods. He’s still picky but not malnourished 😝