There were four guests at the wedding while others tuned in online. They were supposed to be married in front of 400 people this month, but the pandemic put paid to those plans. In August she eloped with her partner Debbie Millman. Time magazine called her “the gift that keeps on giving” and another critic praised her ability to “see around corners … Gay has the voice of the friend you call first for advice, calm and sane as well as funny, someone who has seen a lot and takes no prisoners”. Gay’s small but mighty memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, is a ferociously truthful exploration of sexual assault, PTSD, compulsive eating, weight, dieting and moving through the world as a woman in a larger body. Bad Feminist, her 2014 collection of essays, was a New York Times bestseller. Known for being shy and somewhat reserved in person, the 45-year-old English professor has, in the past 10 years, amassed a powerful body of work including a novel (An Untamed State) and two short story collections (Ayiti and Difficult Women). Her voice is measured, thoughtful and serious. Her video function is not turned on, so I can’t see her deep brown eyes or six-foot-three frame. Gay is in Iceland on a “top secret” work project which she can’t talk about But that’s fine because Gay, a woman known for radical honesty and original thinking in her writing around queerness and race and feminism, has plenty of other things to discuss. The US feminist author, a hero to many millennial women and to plenty of us in an older demographic, says she is grateful to be on a hiatus from her home country, where there is, as she puts it, “a startling lack of leadership” when it comes to the pandemic. “It’s hard to imagine a more fitting editor for a collection like this… everyone should read it.Roxane Gay is on a zoom call from Iceland on her last day of quarantine. It is a critical work that makes this much clear: The violations #MeToo rages against can and do damage people for a lifetime.” - The Globe and Mail “A timely, necessary anthology.” - PureWow “ Not That Bad is essential reading.” - Refinery29 “This is a devastating book, heartbreaking in how familiar and relatable each story is-yet there’s power and solidarity in it, too.” - Shondaland Paste Magazine, “The Best Nonfiction Books of 2018” “A profoundly personal anthology.” - Harper’s Bazaar
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Perhaps that’s the lesson we’re meant to take away from Not that Bad: we’re all “regular.” Shocking as they are, many of these stories will be familiar to us all-and we all deserve better.” - Elisabeth Egan, “The 17 Best Books to Read this Summer,” Glamour Gay’s introduction moved me to tears, as did many of the pieces contributed by household names-Gabrielle Union, Ally Sheedy-but accounts from “regular” women moved me even more. “From the author of Bad Feminist and Hunger (drop everything if you haven’t read this) comes a collection of first-person essays about rape, assault and sexual harassment. “The lauded social critic and provocateur curates a diverse and unvarnished collection of personal essays reckoning with the experiences and systemic dysfunction that produced #MeToo.” - O, the Oprah Magazine Searing and heartbreakingly candid, this provocative collection both reflects the world we live in and offers a call to arms insisting that “not that bad” must no longer be good enough.
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Like Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, Not That Bad will resonate with every reader, saying “something in totality that we cannot say alone.”
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Contributions include essays from established and up-and-coming writers, performers, and critics, including actors Ally Sheedy and Gabrielle Union and writers Amy Jo Burns, Booker Prize-nominated Brandon Taylor, and Lyz Lenz.Ĭovering a wide range of topics and experiences, from an exploration of the rape epidemic embedded in the refugee crisis to first-person accounts of child molestation, this collection is often deeply personal and is always unflinchingly honest. In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are “routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied” for speaking out. Edited and with an introduction by Roxane Gay, the New York Times bestselling and deeply beloved author of Bad Feminist and Hunger, this anthology of first-person essays from writers including Gabrielle Union, Brandon Taylor, and Lyz Lenz tackles rape, assault, and harassment head-on.