Bad Feminist

Cover of Bad Feminist: Essays, 2014. First edition. Publisher: Harper Perennial Pages: 336 (Paperback) ISBN 978-0062282712

Bad Feminist: Essays is a 2014 collection of essays by cultural critic, novelist and professor Roxane Gay. Bad Feminist explores being a feminist while loving things that could seem to go against feminist ideology through essays that explore pop culture and Gay's personal experiences, covering topics as vast as the Sweet Valley High series, Django Unchained, and Gay's own upbringing as a Haitian-American.[1]

It was one of two books published by Gay in 2014, the other being her novel An Untamed State.

Table of contents

[Introduction]

  1. Feminism (n): Plural

[Me]

  1. Feel Me. See Me. Hear Me. Reach Me.
  2. Peculiar Benefits
  3. Typical First Year Professor
  4. To Scratch, Claw, or Grope Clumsily or Frantically

[Gender & Sexuality]

  1. How to Be Friends With Another Woman
  2. Girls, Girls, Girls
  3. I Once Was Miss America
  4. Garish, Glorious Spectacles
  5. Not Here to Make Friends
  6. How We All Lose
  7. Reaching for Catharsis: Getting Fat Right (or Wrong) and Diana Spechler's Skinny
  8. The Smooth Surfaces of Idyll
  9. The Careless Language of Sexual Violence
  10. What We Hunger For
  11. The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion
  12. The Spectacle of Broken Men
  13. A Tale of Three Coming Out Stories
  14. Beyond the Measure of Men
  15. Some Jokes Are Funnier than Others
  16. Dear Young Ladies Who Love Chris Brown So Much They Would Let Him Beat Them
  17. Blurred Lines, Indeed
  18. Trouble with Prince Charming, or He Who Trespassed Against Us

[Race & Entertainment]

  1. Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances from 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help
  2. Surviving Django
  3. Beyond the Struggle Narrative
  4. The Morality of Tyler Perry
  5. The Last Day of a Young Black Man
  6. When Less is More

[Politics, Gender & Race]

  1. The Politics of Respectability
  1. When Twitter Does What Journalism Cannot
  2. Alienable Rights of Women
  3. Holding Out for a Hero
  4. A Tale of Two Profiles
  5. The Racism We All Carry
  6. Tragedy. Call. Compassion. Response.

[Back to Me]

  1. Bad Feminist: Take One
  2. Bad Feminist: Take Two

Critical response

Though Gay was praised for her "wry and delightful voice",[2] critics also found Gay's thesis to be unsupported in places. The New York Times Book Review wrote that Gay relied too heavily on an "unreasonable strawman" to make her point,[1] and The Independent found that Gay's own contradictions within the book comes off as "intellectually flimsy."[3] The Chicago Tribune noted that while "Gay writes incisively, fearlessly, sometimes angrily, often wittily and always intelligently on an incredibly diverse array of issues: race, domestic violence, pop culture, food, social media, child sexual abuse, the Obamas and, of course, feminism," in her columns, Bad Feminist is somewhat lacking: "why, then, is there not more to admire in this collection of Gay's new and previously published essays? One problem is the aforementioned recapitulation of tried and true analyses, opinions and memes, any or all of which might bear reprising if Gay brought to them a new and original take." [4] The Boston Globe wrote that "while there is much to admire," such as her "insightful" essay "What We Hunger For," Bad Feminist "signals an important contribution to the complicated terrain of gender politics."[5] The Huffington Post was more effusive in its praise, writing, "Gay's essays expertly weld her personal experiences with broader gender trends occurring politically and in popular culture," and gave it an 8/10 rating.[6] The Boston Review wrote that "Bad Feminist surveys culture and politics from the perspective of one of the most astute critics writing today." [7]

The book was noted for its popularity in feminist circles, with the satirical site Reductress publishing a story about how a woman was a bad feminist because she hadn't yet read Bad Feminist.[8]

References

  1. 1 2 Gregory, Alice (October 10, 2014). "Daphne Merkin's "The Fame Lunches" and Roxane Gay's "Bad Feminist"". The New York Times. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
  2. ↑ Waldman, Katy (August 5, 2014). "It is Good to be a "Bad" Feminist". Slate. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
  3. ↑ McGill, Hannah (August 21, 2014). "Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay, book review: Breaking her own rules to be honest". The Independent. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Review: 'Bad Feminist' by Roxane Gay". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
  5. ↑ "Review of "Bad Feminist" by Roxane Gay - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
  6. ↑ "The Book We're Talking About". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
  7. ↑ "Let’s Be Real | Boston Review". bostonreview.net. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
  8. ↑ Matlow, Orli (April 15, 2015). "Bad Feminist Still Hasn't Read "Bad Feminist"". Reductress. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
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