“Feminists are just women who don’t want to be treated like shit”Well, Roxane Gay and I both have a favorite quote in common now and I'll also be calling myself a bad feminist because "I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all."I went into this book not knowing much about the author. I feel in love with her just with the intro. I didn’t really connect with some of the stories (especially the first third) but things picked up towards the middle of this book and laughed out loud dur...

In my attempt to escape that comfortable bubble I live in, I am looking to read better by reading more books that help me understand the world better. To keep my thoughts organized, I decided to start a new feature on our blog called Feeding My Head by Reading Better, where I keep my thoughts and notes together as I read a book. So I have added some of those thoughts here for the first few essays for my review but will be adding more thoughts on my blog as I break down my thoughts for the essays...

5 stars for helping me expand my thinking and self-reflection. I'll be returning to this audio collection of essays on much more than "just" feminism.

An interesting book of essays that are worth reading. I liked how the author explored a range of different subjects with different levels of seriousness and humour, using both popular culture and current serious events. I definitely learnt a lot from reading this book and I would say it opened my eyes to things I had not considered before. However some of these essays were not as impactful to me due to living in England and not America. I often had to look up people or events that were mentioned...

I openly embrace the label of bad feminist. I do so because I am flawed and human. I am not terribly well versed in feminist history. I am not as well read in key feminist texts as I would like to be. I have certain... interests and personality traits and opinions that may not fall in line with mainstream feminism, but I am still a feminist. I cannot tell you how freeing it has been to accept this about myself.In her collection of essays Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay blends anecdote, critical analysi...

I became aware of the “I don’t need feminism because . . .” meme several months ago. You know—those photos of young women holding up signs that read things like, “I don’t need feminism because I am capable of critical thinking,” or “I don’t need feminism because I am not a delusional, disgusting, hypocritical man-hater.” I shook my head, rolled my eyes, but still, these weird declarations chilled me. How did a socio-political movement founded on the principles of empowerment and equal rights bec...

my becoming-a-genius project, part 12!for those not yet in the know - sorry for the negative impact this will have on your life, and:i have decided to become a genius.to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.last month, i read only books by asian authors, but i didn't think ahead enough and connect my genius project to tha...

It's not very often that a book causes me to weep uncontrollably in public, but this book did. Roxane Gay moved me in a way that I haven't been moved in quite a while with this collection of essays, ostensibly umbrella'd under the topic of feminism. In reality, only about a third of the essays directly address feminism; Gay also addresses race, culture, and Scrabble competitions. It's equal parts commentary, memoir, and critical analysis. It's pretty phenomenal. I don't even know where to begin

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || PinterestHey, you know what pairs really well with red wine? Books on feminism. BAD FEMINIST has mixed reviews among my friends, with some of them loving it and others hating it. As with any controversial book, that mixed reception only made me want to read BAD FEMINIST for myself. Because your favorite neighborhood snowflake here loves to read up on feminism in its many incarnations, to get the dirt on the latest schools of thought.First off, BA

2.5 starsEssays are one of my favourite literary genres and recently I've read some amazing essay collections that have introduced me to new ideas and new writing styles so perhaps I put overly high expectations on Roxane Gay's essay collection. Overall I'd have to say I was disappointed but this might have a lot to do with my high expectations and perhaps that I am not this book's intended audience.The book started off quite well. I liked the introduction in which Gay discusses what it means t

This writer certainly has a LOT OF OPINIONS. I mean...

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people talk about Roxane Gay. I went into this hoping to love this book, hoping it would be revelatory as promised or that I would be better off for having read it. But it was a slog to get through, and I can't recommend it to anyone who's spent more than a cursory 5 minutes on the internet reading cultural criticism. It isn’t simply that she fails to offer nuanced critique, or that she contradicts herself - it's that these essays are horribly written. The...

This was a very sophisticated book that blended memoir with an educational resource perfectly. I think the chapter that will stick with me most is the one about female characters having the quality of likability held over their heads moreso than male characters, and readers don't ever realize that. It wasn't something I'd never thought about before, and it made me think critically about my expectations of female characters. I'm just gonna let the quote speak for itself:"In a Publishers Weekly in...

This book solidified my girl crush on Roxane Gay. Earlier this year I had the good fortune to hear Roxane speak at a conference, and she was so smart and funny that I kicked myself for not reading her stuff sooner.Bad Feminist is a collection of essays on a variety of issues, including gender, race, pop culture and politics. Basically it's a book for our times. The writing is sharp and insightful, but it also has wit and grace. There were a few essays in this book that were so powerful I could h...

Well...I gave up. I bought the audio for 30-some dollars and figured it might be a great listen. But I find myself dreading listening.Part of it is the bleakness of the current landscape. That's certainly not Roxane Gay's fault. Every day is something new. Author Colleen McCullough dies, and in her obit someone basically feels the need to point out how unattractive the woman was, physically. Patricia Arquette makes a speech about how women should be paid the same to do the same work, and Fox New...

Well this was a huge disappointment. I had such high hopes for Roxane Gay! A Haitian American cultural critic with a master's and a nonperfect body type? Yes! I was sure she would eviscerate popular culture and social injustice with an incisive eye and a unique perspective. But nope. These aren't really essays; they're like unstructured wallowings, ramblings that just flit from thing to thing and never get anywhere or lead to any new thinking. Yes, Gay takes stream-of-consciousness meanders thro...

I fucking hate Roxanne Gay’s Bad Feminist. It’s disappointing on every level and has nothing thought-provoking to say about anything. It’s full of obvious statements, juvenile essays about YA books she loves! and easy, breezy criticisms of other books. If you want to read about feminism, don’t start with this book. It was reviewed (and marketed) as a book about gender issues and feminism. Aside from the introduction, the topic of gender and feminism isn’t broached in any serious way until page 7...

I've been on the look-out to read more feminist books, but most of the ones I tried reading before focus heavily on either privileged males and/ or sexual assaults, which then leads to me feeling terrified to leave my home...However, Bad Feminist focuses more on Gay's opinions about “misogyny, institutional sexism that consistently places women at a disadvantage, the inequity in pay, the cult of beauty and thinness, the repeated attacks on reproductive freedom, violence against women, and on

Trite, trivial, narcissistic and vacuous beyond belief. There's nothing thoughtful or interesting here; the collection is one pretext after another for Gay to publicly exhibit her triviality and bad taste, forgive herself for it and demand applause. Readers are inveigled into service as Gay's indulgent confessors. The repeated routine is a) Gay admits to loving some god awful schlock b) Gay ponders her own courage in making this disclosure c) Gay discovers consuming this schlock is really both p...

An inconsistent collection of ultimately shallow essays. Gay is funny, personable, thoughtful, and obviously intellectual but her essays don't delve deep enough into her subjects. Furthermore, I realize that essays can explore topics without coming to any definitive answers or conclusions, but I want more than an introduction to a problem. I want long and winding explorations with a surfeit of allusions, copious amounts of pattern-hunting from history, deeper thoughts on why something is the way...