She crafts stories that are closely related to her life as a woman of color, and writes candid essays discussing formative experiences and opinions she holds.
In short, she’s part of the national conversation.įor those unfamiliar with Gay, her body of work includes both fiction and nonfiction, with a voice that uses social commentary to parse through daily problems. Since then, I’ve read articles about Gay made note of her novels in the syllabus section of bookstores and even seen Instagram stories from social media influencers picturing her essay collection, Bad Feminist, placed alongside hip, healthy drink. We were reading excerpts from her short story collection, Difficult Women, in which Gay discourages her readers’ tendency to find “likability” in the female characters they read about. I first encountered the work of writer, professor and editor Roxane Gay in a college English class.
