When you walk into a bookstore, or look up titles online, or even glance at the hottest ambivalent literary works on the market, any title having to do with “difficult women” is usually something written by men. More specifically, male psychology professors or doctors. Maybe throw in a lonely house husband who has way too much time on his hands. Of course, these works earn their spots on the popular chains of literature. Men want to know about the female mind, so why not read about someone who knows right? Wrong! What if, the perspective of a difficult woman, came from a woman?
Roxane Gay takes feminism to a whole new level with her newest collection of short stories Difficult Women. Her rising literary fame is supported by several published works, including her essay collection of Bad Feminist. Prestigious presses like the Washington Post, NPR, the Boston Globe, and Kirkus selected Gay’s book as being one of the best of the year. Her stories are a rich mixture of wealth, poverty, race, paradox, loneliness, and uncomfortable intensity. Man to woman communication can be easily dismissed and brushed aside. Woman to woman communication demands to be listened to, and Roxane has a voice loud and clear as a cathedral bell.
The societal expectations of women haven’t gotten any laxer than they were a couple hundred years ago. In fact, one could argue that in many aspects, they’ve taken on deadlier forms. Roxane explores the cultural burdens women shoulder in today’s world phenomenally. Her unique, beautifully poetic voice isn’t soft in her deliverance of the truth. Instead, she shoves her readers right into the face of reality, pushing candor right into the hearts of her audience. Males, as well as females, will be thrust into darkness they couldn’t have imagined existed.
Difficult Women gets really heavy really quick. It’s not a book for light reading, it’s a book for learned reading. The concepts and topics explored in these pages are harsh and painful, but it’s important. Authors, comedians, artists, actors, playwrights, and singers have a responsibility to be our cultural zeitgeists. For the most part, their work does well in exposing the hard parts of the world society refuses to acknowledge. It’s our duty as sideline watchers, to look at the content these people produce. They do their part in materializing the abstract, it’s our job to spread the news. Roxane Gay is a hardcore writer unafraid to make you listen. I challenge you to flip through the pages of her book and be brave enough to see the truth.
“I don’t have time to read a whole book…”
“That’s okay! They’re short stories, keyword being short.”
“Well I don’t have time to look for one I’d like either.”
“That’s okay too, I’ve got a list for you.”
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I Will Follow You
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The Mark of Cain
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La Negra Blanca
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North Country
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Requiem for a Glass Heart
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Break All the Way Down
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Bad Priest
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I Am a Knife
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The Sacrifice of Darkness
Can you do it? Can you look at the dark parts of society and pay it forward?
YES, you can.