Bad Feminist

Content Warning: This section references sexual violence, domestic violence, racial violence, and domestic terrorism.

Roxane Gay (1974-Present) is a Black American writer, editor, professor, and social critic of Haitian descent. She earned her master’s degree with an emphasis in creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a doctorate in rhetoric and technical communication at Michigan Technological University. Gay has taught at Eastern Illinois University, Purdue University, and Yale University in the fields of English and creative writing. She has published four books and is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, the founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, and editor for Gay Magazine.

Gay makes her academic, professional, and subjective experience clear throughout the text. She opens and closes the book with essays about herself. Where the opening section offers readers insight into the world she inhabits, the closing section conveys how this experience culminates in her embrace of “bad feminism.” In between, Gay illustrates her love of reading and writing and her involvement in the literary world with many discussions on novels, journalism, and literary discourse. She also emphasizes that as a Black feminist, she is not only concerned with matters of gender oppression, but also racism, anti-gay bias, and class difference—that is, with