Solutions don’t seem to be the point, maybe because Gay doesn’t think they exist, but probably because the path from inquiry to neat answer accosts her sense of complexity. They pose a question or problem (“The Alienable Rights of Women,” “The Trouble with Prince Charming”), turning it under the light. Gay’s essays are more beginnings and middles than they are ends. In this book, at least, they rarely deposit you at a destination. Roxane Gay ties in personal experiences and stories in each essay but she never has a solution to any issue she brings up. At first one would think is an argument about feminism or racial equality based on the first few essays with titles like “Girls, Girls, Girls” and many others. As she says this and contradicts herself even more throughout the book readers may start to wonder what her argument is. Here Gay contradicts herself say yes she wants to do things on her own but at the same time she wants someone to do things for her. “I want to be independent, but I want to be taken care of and have someone to come home to”(Gay 314). Gay admits that she to is guilty of following the social norms of society. Gay also expounds on culturally fraught concepts such as privilege, trigger warnings, and rape culture. In a bracing chapter, “A tale of two profiles,” Gay compares the reporting and cultural conversations around the Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to those about Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager killed by George Zimmerman. Readers get to hear what Gay thinks about a wide array of celebrities, scoundrels, and respected public figures, such as Bill Cosby, Chris Brown, Jerry Sandusky, Paula Deen, Don Lemon, Marissa Mayer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Wendy Davis. Gay also explores high-profile books and, often, their critical reception.Įxamples include Lean In, The End of Men, Gone Girl, The Hunger Games, the Twilight series, and Fifty Shades of Grey. She discusses television shows such as Girls, Orange is the New Black, Tosh.O, and Law & Order: SVU. The essay on The Help was itself worth the price of admission. Roxane Gay critiques movies such as Django Unchained, 12 Years a Slave, Fruitvale Station, The Help, and the whole Tyler Perry oeuvre. Then in the end she says that she is a “Bad Feminist” because she follows along with the norms of today’s society even though she apparently doesn’t agree with them. However, in a way is is irrelevant because she points out all of these topics and what is wrong with them and what should be done about it.
Don’t get me wrong, Bad Feminist is a good book because it is based on many topics and issues that are being dealt with today. The book is composed of several different essays of Gay’s that are on African American equality and gender equality. However if you are familiar with these topics this book can be a dull read. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay is a great book to read if you are a person who is ignorant to what these issues deal with and how bad they are. There are many books out there in our society about issues like gender and racial equality, and especially feminism.