#MondayMotivation: Our Woman of the Week is Roxane Gay!
By Emily Scott
Every Monday, Culturess chooses one woman in pop culture to be our Woman of the Week. These women inspire and empower us to kick ass, take names, fight the good fight, and live our best lives. Today, our Woman of the Week is Roxane Gay!
The first lines of Roxane Gay’s Twitter bio read as follows: “I write. I want a tiny baby elephant. If you clap, I clap back.” And she does. There is no greater destroyer of trolls. The underbelly of Twitter somehow glommed onto Gay, and they haven’t stopped criticizing her every move, from her op-eds in The New York Times to, literally, her cooking. But instead of ignoring them, she calmly but savagely points out how ridiculous these people are.
“Thanks for commenting and letting me know my pot roast looks like sh*t,” she told her bizarrely concerned hater. “Best of luck with your future endeavors.”
Obviously, her Twitter feed is the least impressive thing about Roxane Gay. But it’s an excellent representation of exactly what she’s all about. Because her clapback philosophy holds true in every aspect of her life and career. When bullsh*t happens, Gay speaks up. In one way or another, she tells the world exactly what she thinks of what’s going on. And she won’t let it slide, no matter how much criticism she gets.
Difficult Women by Roxane Gay (Cover courtesy of Grove Atlantic/Grove Press)
As just one example, take the best-selling book that brought Roxane Gay literary fame, Bad Feminist. The collection of essays features Gay’s views on many various and sometimes controversial topics. From Chris Brown to Tyler Perry to Scrabble, Gay loves and criticizes in equal measure. She was the writer who taught me, and many others, that loving a thing and calling it out are not mutually exclusive. Does vehemently loving the hyper-masculine The Fast and the Furious franchise or the problematic Hunger Games series make you a bad feminist? Maybe, says Gay. But, as she says in the last line of her book, “I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.”
But we aren’t talking about just any feminist writer. Anyone who has their head on straight could say important and right things about feminism. Few can do so with the beauty and grace and humor of Roxane Gay’s prose. Just look at her op-eds in The New York Times, which tackle intersections of race, womanhood, queerness, and other identities with cultural events. Whether she’s writing about Nate Parker’s rape allegations, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, or the deaths of people of color at the hands of the police, the love and sincerity with which she writes pulls your heart toward the people in the piece, and toward her.
In addition to her many personal and cultural essays, Roxane Gay has published a novel entitled An Untamed State, is a writer of Marvel’s World of Wakanda comics, and has just finished a screenplay, according to her Twitter. Later this year we will see her upcoming memoir about her relationship with weight and food, called Hunger. But this week, Gay will be releasing her collection of stories, entitled Difficult Women. This multi-faceted, multi-genre author keeps bringing us the most incredible work, and we can’t wait to see more of it.
Roxane Gay spent years hustling, publishing essays in tons of publications before her breakout book Bad Feminist hit the shelves. Since then she has worked in many different genres and forms of writing, publishing cultural criticism, op-eds, stories, personal essays, comics, and even writing a screenplay. Despite the fact that she is almost constantly barraged by trolls each day, she never let’s them affect the path she’s on. She works hard, enlightens, inspires, and, yes, she claps back.
Thanks for being our Monday Motivation, Roxane! Vow to take no one’s sh*t this week, in Roxane Gay’s honor.
Next: How to Talk About Art at the End of the World
You can see Roxane Gay’s work here:
Difficult Women: You can buy Roxane Gay’s latest book on Amazon! You can also visit the Difficult Women website for more information and for book tour dates.
Bad Feminist: Bad Feminist is available on Amazon or in bookstores.
An Untamed State: Roxane Gay’s first novel is also available on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
World of Wakanda: Check out the first issue (and find a store that may be carrying it) here!
The New York Times: Check out Roxane Gay’s New York Times author page for her op-eds.
Twitter: Follow Roxane Gay (@rgay) on Twitter to keep up with her work – and for her musings on Channing Tatum, obviously.