Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is an American feminist writer, professor, editor and commentator. She is an associate professor of English at Purdue University, contributing op-ed writer at The New York Times, founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, essays editor for The Rumpus, and co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
advanced believe black fairy finding hopeless likely love news tells time true
I am 39. I am single. I am a black woman. I have too many advanced degrees. Many a news story tells me finding true love is likely a hopeless proposition. Now is the time when I need to believe in fairy tales.
accept bad fair feminist freely good label mess rather
I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.
based feminists needs though ways womanhood
I think one of the most important things we can do as feminists is acknowledge that, even though we have womanhood in common, we have to start to think about the ways in which we're different, how those differences affect us, and what kinds of needs we have based on our differences.
human move next witness
We bear witness to the worst of human brutality, retweet what we have witnessed, and then we move on to the next atrocity. There is always more atrocity.
dreamed enamored fairy flights happily resembling supposed
I have never dreamed of being a princess. I have not longed for Prince Charming. I have and do long for something resembling a happily ever after. I am supposed to be above such flights of fantasy, but I am not. I am enamored of fairy tales.
love maybe notion
Maybe true love isn't out there for me, but I can sublimate my loneliness with the notion that true love is out there for someone.
along experience fairy given happily promise pursuing season several suffer throughout women
Throughout any given season of 'The Bachelor,' the women exclaim that the experience is like a fairy tale. They suffer the machinations of reality television, pursuing - along with several other women, often inebriated - the promise of happily ever after.
fallible
I recognize that I'm human, and the older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am, how fallible we all are.
encourages female fragile given ink intensely relationships
A lot of ink is given over to mythologizing female friendships as curious, fragile relationships that are always intensely fraught. Stop reading writing that encourages this mythology.
aims ignorant means movement people word
This is the real problem feminism faces. Too many people are willfully ignorant about what the word means and what the movement aims to achieve.
comment outrageous reactions truest
Something outrageous, in the truest sense of the word, is always happening. On social networks, we're always voicing our reactions to these outrageous events. We read essays and 'think pieces' about these outrageous events. We comment on the commentary. We do this because we can.
issues people
Definitely, there is a sense in my writing that people now know me in a personal way. And to an extent, that's true because I write about very personal things, and I use the personal often to contextualize some of these sociopolitical issues that we're dealing with. And to an extent, they're right. They know something about me.
marathon outrage people shared social
After the Boston Marathon bombings, people shared grief and outrage on social media.
ashamed change constantly physically sort themselves trying
I think that everyone in one way or another has some sort of body issue. There's something about themselves physically that they're not happy with, that they're ashamed of, that they keep constantly trying to change.