a book

Bad Feminist

Name: Bad Feminist
Rating: 5 (6 reviews)
Author: Roxane Gay
ISBN: 9780062282712

Roxane Gay · 2014 · 336 pages

From the author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, the New York Times Bestseller and Best Book of the Year at NPR, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, and many more

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay.

“Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.”

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better, coming from one of our most interesting and important cultural critics.

recommended by 6 people

sourced from public statements

John Green
“@DaveMarshall12 I have so many essayists I love. To name a few books: Eula Biss's On Immunity; Rebecca Solnit's Field Guide to Getting Lost, Aleksander Hemon's Book of My Lives, Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, Mary Oliver's Upstream, and Thomas Berry's The Great Work.”↗
Emma Watson
“I am also re-reading essays from Gay’s ‘Bad Feminist’. We put such high expectations on ourselves as feminists, on other feminists, and the movement as a whole. It feels like such a relief to take ownership of words like “nasty woman” and “bad feminist”. They don’t have so much power this way and maybe they remind us not to hold ourselves and others to unreasonably high standards - we are all human after all and at different moments of our learning journeys. We need to feel free to be on those journeys and make mistakes. I hope if you get time you’ll enjoy what she has to say about this too.”↗
Phoebe Robinson
“Like lots of people, I really love Roxane Gay. This is one of my favorite essay collections I’ve read in the past five to ten years. She’s really good at conversational writing that’s also academic and intelligent and funny. After #MeToo there’s a lot of introspection, and people need to analyze themselves and see what feminist they’ll be. There’s no perfect feminist.”↗
Constance Wu
“Anyone who likes this book, I like them.”↗
Lena Dunham
Anya Taylor-Joy