The Hollow Half: Sarah Aziza’s Unfiltered Reclamation of Anorexia

Sarah Aziza’s The Hollow Half is not merely a memoir; it is a deliberate act of defiance against the commodified narratives of eating disorder recovery. In a literary landscape where stories of anorexia often conclude with triumphant recoveries and neatly tied bows, Aziza’s account is raw, unfiltered, and unapologetically complex. Her journey is not just about food and body image; it is about reclaiming a fragmented identity that has been shaped by trauma, cultural erasure, and the weight of assimilation.

The Illusion of Recovery

Aziza’s initial foray into writing about her eating disorder began in journalism school, where she penned a personal essay on loss. However, the narrative that emerged was a sanitized version of her experiences, stripped of nuance and depth. Early published works reduced her complex struggles—including trauma, queerness, and her Palestinian heritage—into digestible, inspiring stories of recovery. These oversimplified portrayals left her feeling erased, her true story obscured by the very medium she sought to use for expression.

A Health Crisis and a Reckoning

In 2019, a health crisis forced Aziza to confront the severity of her illness. At 5’10” and 82 pounds, she was given an ultimatum: treatment or death. Yet, within the sterile walls of the eating disorder ward, she found herself suffocated by behavioral modification techniques that reduced recovery to numbers—calories, pounds, intake forms. This experience highlighted the rigid surveillance and loss of autonomy inherent in mainstream eating disorder treatment, prompting Aziza to question the assumption that such illnesses belong only to rich, white women.

Intergenerational Trauma and Identity

The roots of Aziza’s disorder run deeper than personal experience. In the hollow spaces where hunger festers, she unearths the buried history of her father’s Palestinian identity—an identity he tried to suppress in an effort to sell her the American dream. This exploration reveals how intergenerational trauma and cultural erasure manifest in the body, intertwining personal and collective histories in a complex tapestry of survival.

A Narrative Reclaimed

The Hollow Half is a reclamation of narrative. Aziza’s story refuses to conform to the tidy endings often expected of eating disorder memoirs. Instead, it embraces the disorder’s complexity and her intertwined personal and cultural history, asserting her voice amid ongoing silencing of Palestinian experiences and reductive portrayals of recovery in media. In doing so, Aziza challenges readers to reconsider the narratives they consume and the stories they tell about healing and identity.