Author Roxane Gay’s Journey From Trauma to Healing Coming to Lifetime

Roxane Gay will share her personal story of trauma and survival in a new Lifetime movie.

The acclaimed author wrote and executive produced Surviving the Silence: The Roxane Gay Story, an original film based on her 2017 bestseller, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.

Gay narrates the movie, which is scheduled to premiere Sept. 5, Lifetime announced Tuesday.

The film stars Hilda Martin as a young Roxane, while Sunnii E. Bartee plays the author as an adult.

Surviving the Silence follows 12-year-old Roxane after her family moves to what appears to be a welcoming suburban community. The young girl’s life is forever changed when she is the victim of a devastating act of sexual violence.

“My life is split in two — there’s the before. There’s the after,” Gay says in the trailer. “I wanted to forget. I wanted to be strong, so I kept my secret.”

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As she struggles with the effects of the trauma, she turns to food as a way to cope and begins to gain weight. The film chronicles her lifelong journey to understand her body, reclaim her voice, and confront a society that judges women by their appearance.

Lifetime describes the movie as “a deeply personal portrait of resilience, identity and the enduring pursuit of self-acceptance.”

Asia Youngman directed Surviving the Silence from a script by Gay. Suzanne Todd and Howard Braunstein serve as executive producers alongside Suzanne Todd Productions.

Gay was born in Nebraska to Haitian parents. Her family moved around a lot during her childhood, leading her to find comfort in books and begin writing at a young age. She would eventually become an influential feminist writer, professor, editor and cultural commentator.

The author is best known for her 2014 New York Times bestselling collection of essays titled Bad Feminist. Her other works include the novel An Untamed State, the short-story collection Difficult Women, and her memoir that inspired the Lifetime movie. She also worked as a writer on Peacock’s Queer as Folk reboot.

Surviving the Silence: The Roxane Gay Story premieres Saturday, Sept. 5, at 8/7c on Lifetime.