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It is important to me in my writing to understand my characters, whether I like them or loath them. And yet I was still able to see how he became who he became. There is a character named Commander and he is a horrible person, a sociopath and a rapist. I think about my novel, An Untamed State. It not only helps me see them better, but also empathize with them better. Good people do bad things and bad people do good things.ĭoes messiness help you know your characters better? This idea being that life is messy and complicated and it is rare that we have neat endings and tight conclusions to anything. My fiction and non-fiction work on a spectrum. I think this serves the book well. Do you see messiness at work in your fiction as well? In Bad Feminist, rather than defining what feminism is you fully embrace the “fallibility” of it…the “messiness” of it. Sometimes it is just better on the outside. I was reading these writers who were outsiders for various reasons-not only from society as a whole, but also queerness-and they helped me begin to be okay with being on the outside looking in, and with life being messy. It was the concerns of heterosexual white women that feminism was. When you look at the history of feminism, queer women have been left out. Queerness helped me understand feminism better, and the importance of feminism. It was queer writers that helped me have queer people to look up to.ĭo you think that reading those authors impacted your feminism? It was not until the first couple of years of college that I thought, “Oh, I think I might also be attracted to women.” I started reading Lesléa Newman, Leslie Feinberg, and Pat Califia. It is not something accepted in Haitian culture-well that is what they say, but that is not true -so I did not have queer people to look up to. I was sheltered, and queerness was not part of my life. When you were growing up were there any queer people you could look to for inspiration or guidance? I was always thinking, “I am never going to belong.” The older I get the more I realize that if you don’t find a place where you belong it is okay to create a place of your own. As I got older I continued to feel like I was on the outside looking in. I was Haitian American in Nebraska and a lot of people didn’t know what to do with that. I have always felt like an outsider because I was very shy growing up. Bad Feminist was written in the spirit of trying to find a place where I belong, and being okay in not belonging. I think “messiness” is what inspired a lot of Bad Feminist … trying to figure out where I fit in when I don’t fit into the traditional definitions of feminism-or queerness for that matter. There are a lot of connections between what is happening in feminism and queerness. It has been awesome that people are thinking about identity in that way-and not just feminism. I have gotten a few emails from bad queers. Would you think it was funny if I said I wanted to write a book called Bad Queer?
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#ROXANE GAY ESSAYS ONLINE HOW TO#
Along the way the reader is invited to revel in Gay’s love of Scrabble, consider the power of the Hunger Games, and gleam tips on how to be a good girlfriend.ĭuring a summer that saw Laverne Cox hit the big time, Ferguson revolt, Beyonce perform “Flawless,” and the continuing debate over women’s bodies, Bad Feminist seems to have arrived right on time-not to deliver answers, but to entice readers to join Gay in chipping away at what is expected and what is respected, and to embrace the mess and the perspective of being an outsider. In the book we get to know Roxane Gay, a bisexual Haitian American woman who having survived academia to achieve her PhD is now an Associate Professor of English at Purdue University. This summer Gay’s book of essays, Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial, 2014)-culled largely from her prodigious online archive-was released, becoming a touchstone text for those who understand that life is (to borrow a word from the interview below) messy. Holly Bass of The New York Times wrote, “In this fable, the princess and a wicked witch relate to each other as real women do, and ultimately rescue each other.” This year saw the release of her first novel, An Untamed State (Grove Atlantic, 2014) which garnered strong reviews. Her work appears everywhere, including The Guardian, Twelve Stories, XO Jane, Salon, and The Rumpus (where she is also the essays editor).
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Roxane Gay: On Messiness, Not Belonging, and What Being Queer Taught Her About Being a (Bad) Feministįrom covering pop culture, to writing beautifully crafted short stories Roxane Gay has long been a prolific online presence.