On Wednesday night, I saw Roxane Gay for the second time with @womenandchildrenfirst bookstore in Chicago. She was in conversation with journalist and essayist Britt Julious. Gay was promoting her short story collection Difficult Women, which I read late last year and adored. @roxanegay read “Open Marriage,” followed by an excerpt from the title story, “Difficult Women,” a story exploring the labels put on women. She described Difficult Women as the first book she ever tried to sell, but “editors all said it was so dark it made them want to die, and I said, ‘Yes, that’s the idea.’ So I’m glad that people are reading it and not dying.”
“All my stories are grounded in very literal things.”
Roxane Gay’s stories have been inspired by Activia yogurt commercials and a spot of water damage on a ceiling. They begin with a gut instinct, and often take on meaning on reflection later. For example, she didn’t realize how many sisters there were in Difficult Women until it was published. It made sense for her though: she’s idealized sisterhood as she doesn’t have a sister, and as for twins, she’s interested in what it would be like to share the world with an exact copy of yourself.
She does have obsessions as a writer: dedicated readers will know that she often returns to exploring violence and its aftermath. A reader from the audience asks how she’s able to balance writing about such trauma and going about her daily life. “I’m lucky enough to be able to enter a writing state, and also be able to break out of it when I need to,” says Gay. Her desire to be careful about how she writes violence also helps her to keep some emotional distance as she writes.
“I think I’ve already done everything.”—on what new kinds of writing she’ll try next
Writing for Marvel was a challenge, but “storytelling is storytelling.” She read both DC and Marvel guidebooks—DC’s, she mentioned, was better—and found it interesting to think more in scene and panels.
“I leave poetry to my betters,” Gay admits, describing a poem from her twenties called “Tears,” which began, “Tears. I am crying tears.” (“What else would I be crying?” Roxane laughs.)
“People are always surprised that we’re there, as if black people are only meant to occupy certain places.”—on living in remote, rural areas
The same can be said of queerness. Gay acknowledges that it’s more than challenging to be a black woman in the public eye, but that it’s also “necessary. Often I’m the first to do anything, which is weird in 2017, but I try and see it as an opportunity to not be the last.” She would love to break free of rural spaces. Her life and apartment are in LA, but the writing world is competitive, and she didn’t even get an interview at UCLA last year. She lives in Indiana because she works at Purdue, but has plans to leave.
"There need to be multiple narratives about fatness.”
Gay announces to tremendous applause that they had just closed Hunger the previous night, and that it would be coming out this June (it originally had a release date of June 2016—“What goes around really does come around.”) It was a difficult book for Gay to write, requiring even more vulnerability that she had been prepared for, at a time when she was constantly on tour. The press also worried her. She realizes in the course of the conversation that her writing had slowed down considerably after a Chicago newspaper published an awful headline joking about her weight, and she realized how toxic the press would be when this memoir was published. In a world where Ira Glass still doesn’t understand how to talk about fatness, she is nervous about how both the haters and her supporters will react on social media and in person.
Gay thinks carefully about how she writes fatness. She wants it to be truthful but not hurtful, not shaming people even when she is feeling miserable. “It was so hard for me to be here and be successful,” Gay says. “Ten times as hard as for a skinny woman.” She describes appearing at book signings and not being recognized, or having them be incredulous. “It’s one of the last acceptable prejudices, and no one comes to their defense.” Gay tries to, though, by writing about it. “It’s like renegotiating and reasserting your self-worth and humanity with every new interaction,” Gay says. “It’s a full-time job.”
"He can speak. I encourage him to speak. Be you, Milo. Flourish.”
“They’re acting like children now,” Gay says about Simon & Schuster, which she withdrew her book from earlier this year in response to their publication of Milo Yiannopoulos’s book. They later withdrew, but not before they changed its publication date of Milo’s book to the day Hunger was going to be published. “As if we’re in competition—as if one person is going to consider buying both of these books.” She laughed. “It’s amazing to see this huge corporation, and it’s just so petty.” Gay brushed off the ‘free speech’ claimants. “He can speak. I encourage him to speak. Be you, Milo. Flourish.” But she believes publishing a provocateur is different from publishing a true believer: they’re giving a platform to someone who uses hate speech for fame.
Twitter is getting better at policing trolls although only for verified accounts. It’s the people who are constantly correcting, policing, and calling out her tweets that are driving Gay insane (just a few examples). For example, the Tumblr Q&A the other day wasn’t curated. At all. Gay answered a lot of the hate-filled questions to show people what she deals with, but it was a shame and a waste. Living in Indiana, though, she enjoys the connection she gets to fellow writers, friends, and family with social media. So she hopes not to leave Twitter.
When it comes to changing things, Gay doesn’t think academia is the front line. It’s raising better children. “People should get a manual for how to be a human when they take their babies home,” Gay sighs, referring to students who show up to college spouting ignorance they learned from their parents. What we can do in academia is “be better gatekeepers,” mainly by opening the gates, giving more access to education, and by supporting those who might think they don’t belong in that space.
“Your truth is enough. You don’t have to embellish,” Gay advises young feminists.
The event was warm and full of laughter. Questions were good, and the conversation interesting. The signing line was long. Roxane Gay has visited Chicago with Women and Children First twice before, and she plans to come again.
