![roxane gay books roxane gay books](https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/roxane-gay-feature-1024x576.jpg)
Perhaps the most enlightening parts of Bad Feminist for me were the essays where Gay deals with race. Her descriptions of her experiences at various tournaments tickled me with their seriousness that bordered on ridiculous.
#ROXANE GAY BOOKS PROFESSIONAL#
Gay reveals how Scrabble, much like professional sports, involves many rules, ruthless players and mind games. They’re few, to be sure – you can’t be funny when talking about rape and rape culture, which Gay explores in the essay “Some Jokes Are Funnier Than Others.” One of the lighter bits, and one of my favorite parts of the entire collection, is the essay “To Scratch, Claw, or Grope Clumsily or Frantically,” in which Gay tells of how she got into playing professional Scrabble. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some lighter moments throughout the text. While this is merely a book with words on pages, it deals in a nonfiction that we see playing out in the media and the internet and in our lives every single day. It can be exhausting to care so deeply and be so passionate about your beliefs it’s an exhaustion that Gay voices herself. I will not lie and say that there were times where I had to step away from this collection in favor of lighter reading. This is a woman who understands that her point of view is one of many, but that doesn’t make it any less important for her to say her piece. Gay’s arguments are strong and delivered with conviction, but she by no means is rabble-rousing. I also found it liberating to read about feminism and race and gender from an author who meticulously lays out her arguments, drawing in examples from various texts, current events and pop culture. This book felt like personal liberation for me because I got confirmation that someone thinks the way I do. And just as Gay finds freedom in identifying as a bad feminist, I find peace in knowing I am not the only person who feels like a bad feminist from time to time. Much of what Roxane Gay says in her essay collection Bad Feminist describes emotions and thoughts and experiences that I identify and connect with deeply. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt like a bad feminist.
![roxane gay books roxane gay books](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2017/08/02/10/hunger.jpg)
I cannot tell you how freeing it has been to accept this about myself.” –Roxane Gay I have certain…interests and personality traits and opinions that may not fall in line with mainstream feminism, but I am still a feminist. I am not as well read in key feminist texts as I would like to be. I am not terribly well versed in feminist history. “I openly embrace the label of bad feminist.