Hollow : A Memoir of My Body in the Marines

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Illuminating and infuriating . . . A staggering achievement." ( Publishers Weekly starred review)



A powerful coming-of-age memoir of one girl's struggle, adrift in warrior culture



At eighteen, Bailey Williams bolted from her strict Mormon upbringing to a Marine recruiting office to enlist as a 2600--a military linguist. But the first language the Marine Corps taught her wasn't Arabic, Farsi, or Dari. It was how Marines speak to, and about, women. There are only three kinds of women in the Marine Corps, she was told: you can be a bitch, a dyke, or a whore.



Determined to prove she's not whatever it is the men around her believe a woman to be, Private Williams turned to an eating disorder, intending to show her discipline through the visible testament of bone. She ran endurance distances on an increasingly Spartan diet, shoving through her own body's resistance.



Pushed to the brink by a leadership and a culture that demands women shrink themselves, she finally looked to the women around her, and began to wonder what else she was losing. Quietly but inexorably, the power of other women's stories whispered an alternative path to what it means to be a woman, and a warrior.



Hollow is a story for anyone whose identity has been prescribed to them--and has dared question if there is another way to live.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In this harrowing debut, former U.S. Marine Williams discusses the relationship between her eating disorder and the military's treatment of female troops. Raised Mormon in West Virginia, Williams desperately wanted to leave her hometown and find meaningful work. At 18, she enlisted in the Marines and started training to become a linguist. Initially enchanted with the Marines, she soon learned that the military mirrored her Mormon upbringing in its propensity for secrecy: Williams and her fellow women service members were told it would be better to grow thick skins rather than to report sexual innuendos and overtures from commanding officers. Williams pushed her body to extremes to prove her strength, and in the process fell back into disordered eating habits she'd overcome as a teenager. Soon, Williams was starving herself, then bingeing and purging, which caused damage to her esophagus. Meanwhile, her superiors ignored her cries for help because she "didn't look sick." Eventually, on the brink of suicide, she secured an honorable discharge. Williams's unflinching recollections of self-harm and institutional misogyny are illuminating and infuriating, and she sounds a welcome note of optimism in the book's final pages ("I'll sleep with confidence in the hard-won knowledge I can and will fight like hell if something surprises me"). It's a staggering achievement. Agent: Julie Stevenson, Massie & McQuilkin Literary. (Nov.)

Booklist Review

Shortly after her high-school graduation, Mormon teenager Williams enlisted in the Marines. After boot camp and training, she was sent to the Department of Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, to study Arabic before her deployment as a military crypto linguist. Unfortunately, her love for her country and for the Marines couldn't spare her the ravages of a quickly developing, severe eating disorder. Neither was she spared the experience--her own and others'--of sexual assault and misogyny that seemed to run rampant and unchecked. Williams grew up both sheltered by her religion and as the victim of child abuse, neither of which equipped her to thrive in this new environment. The author presents her raw, often disturbing experiences with grit and honesty, delivering a compelling coming-of-age memoir that will keep readers cheering for her as she attempts to navigate a demanding culture, prove herself as a warrior, and ultimately engage in the fight of her life to get the help she needs.