In 2014, the American writer and professor Roxane Gay launched the test – which has become cult – bad feminist ; a groundbreaking reflection on the current state of the women’s rights movement. By appropriating this ironic title of bad feminist, the author invited her colleagues to assume their contradictions and make them forces for the defense of gender equality.
Whether through essays, fiction or her Twitter feed, Roxane Gay always does a little bit: encourage women — ALL women — to take control of their history, to fight for their agency, their safety, their space, to understand and celebrate their flaws, their fears and their complexity.
Collection Difficult Women — which brings together short stories written mostly before 2012, when the writer was at university — depicts women who, despite trauma, violence, judgments and barriers, fight for the right to exist, and to live their lives as they see fit. Women who make love, women who bear children, give birth to them or mourn them. Women raped, beaten, humiliated, ready to do violence to themselves, to put themselves in dangerous situations to regain control.
The title of the book, with great eloquence, refers with irony to this phallocentric vision according to which a woman is never so beautiful, so easy to live with, so suitable for marriage as when she knows how to be silent.
“Women who express needs, desires, thoughts and feelings are often called ‘difficult’ because they dare to exist,” Roxane Gay points out. To have to, by intervening keyboard. My characters could be considered as such, when in reality it is often the men in their lives who are difficult. They are the ones who make them doubt themselves, or feel guilty for wanting reciprocity, equality or whatever. »
React to his wounds
In the short story “I will follow you”, the fusional relationship between two sisters is explained by the abduction and the abuse they suffered as children. In “Breaking to the End”, a woman in mourning for her child allows herself to be abused by a cruel and angry man. Elsewhere, a woman is rejected by everyone, hounded by the water and its ravages. Another accepts without saying a word that her husband regularly changes places with his twin brother.
The heroines of Roxane Gay have lived through difficult experiences — sexual, marital and domestic abuse, fatphobia, racism or colorism — and are forced to live with these wounds and react accordingly. The author explores the full spectrum of violence experienced by those on the margins, and how this violence is perpetrated and consumed by both men and women in positions of privilege.
“The antecedents of the characters, who have lived their share of horrors, are revealed with great skill, like strata that we discover one by one, indicates Olivia Tapiero, to whom the French translation of the collection was entrusted. The writer begins by showing their behavior, sometimes shocking, before delving into their past. As a reader, it allows us to understand how easy it is to judge someone when we don’t know what’s behind it. »
The translator also highlights the author’s talent for sculpting faces of great authenticity and complexity that go beyond objectification. “I have a lot of admiration for this ability to name traumas without giving the impression of exploiting them, without dehumanizing the character who is suffering. This ethics in fiction runs through Roxane Gay’s work in general. All its protagonists have a humanity, even if it is sometimes very ugly. When she portrays aggressors, she allows us to dissect their perception, to look them in the face without ever absolving them. »
Roxane Gay leaves a lot of room for the interpretation and experience of the readers, especially in certain new imprints of magical realism, such as “The Sacrifice of Darkness”, where a miner flies towards the sun, absorbing all the light in the world, or “Requiem for a Heart of Glass”, in which a stone thrower marries a woman of glass, before cheating on her with someone he can love less cautiously.
“I love fairy tales in all their incarnations, and I enjoy playing with the extremes covered in them — good and evil, light and dark, love and hate. There is an incredible narrative richness, ”explains the author.
justice for all
Real tsunamis have shaken the planet of women since the publication of the original version of the collection in 2017. Feminist struggles have gained visibility, in particular thanks to the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, taken up by the Hollywood elite. However, the battle is still in its infancy, according to Roxane Gay.
“We are certainly heading in the right direction, but we are not as far as we should be on the road to fairness and justice. In fact, we barely moved. Too many people still avoid the feminist label, or want to redefine it, when the definition is simple and already well established. Right now, we should be focusing on reproductive freedom, subsidized child care, trans rights, and pay equity; in short, reviewing the issues we have always focused on from an intersectional perspective. »
“It is important to keep in mind that not all women can speak,” adds Olivia Tapiero. We are still in a hostile environment for racialized and trans women. Until those on the margins are represented in our struggles, we are failing. »