“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.
Praise
"A visceral, powerful, and illuminating memoir of women, bodies, and the military.Bailey Williams writes hauntingly of a life dictated by rules, religion, self-destruction, self-harm, and misogyny. Hollow is a necessary and compelling book about girlhood, womanhood, personhood, and what it means to finally crawl from a painful place and begin to build a beautiful, longed-for life."
—Kathleen Glasgow, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces
"Hollow is a flare of pain, a throat-aching cry of rage, a wake-up call at 2 a.m., a sharp splinter slipping under the skin into the bloodstream and traveling to the heart, a rumble in the stomach, and a restless chase after self-identity. Bailey Williams's story of her struggle as a female Marine with an eating disorder will have you riveted to the page and leave you reeling with empathy. This is an astounding book about pain and the empowerment that rises out of it."
—David Abrams, author of Brave Deeds and Fobbit
“This brutal, riveting, and wry gut-punch of a story transports readers deep inside the world of a young Marine with a dangerous eating disorder. I promise Hollow will expand readers’ understanding of ‘collateral damage’ and the will it takes to reclaim one’s own body and life."
—Clare Frank, author of Burnt: A Memoir of Fighting Fire
"Bailey Williams’s memoir adds an important and under-represented voice to the genre of military memoir: the unvarnished experience of a woman serving in uniform. In Hollow she tells the story of how a woman's body, mind and being experience military service in ways far different from the men around her."
—Ben Kesling, author of Bravo Company: An Afghanistan Deployment and Its Aftermath
