Book Review: Bad Feminist

Bad Feminist
By Roxane Gay
Review by Claudia

Bad Feminist is a collection of essays published in 2014 which focuses on the author’s experience of being a black woman in the USA, the politics relevant to this experience and a rich variety of contemporary art and media. For example, some essays are personal and feature major events from the author’s life. Others tackle aspects of feminism, like its elitism, views on who can and cannot be a feminist, who you can date if you are a feminist and all the conflicting feelings feminism can inspire. Also, competitive Scrabble. Gay expertly walks the tightrope of light and shade, dispensing wit at appropriate times while not shying away from the sombre and harrowing.

If you opt to read the book cover to cover, you might uncover the weakness I found about halfway through the book. I began to find the essay structures repetitive. In places where the ideas and content of an essay felt slight, the bones of the essay’s structure began to show. I started to predict the pivots in the rhetoric of Gay’s arguments, and wondered why the essays had not been edited into shorter, punchier versions. Her infamous essay on trigger warnings is an example of this tendency. Not only is the logic of the essay weak, the indecision of where to end can be felt in reading it.

Ten years later, this book still feels current and lively. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about intersectional feminism, or those who want to read the opinions of a feminist who candidly admits where the theories of feminism clash with the reality of life. Her essay ‘How to Be Friends with Another Women’ should be printed and distributed to high schools everywhere: “If you feel like it’s hard to be friends with women, consider that maybe women aren’t the problem.”