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Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, Difficult Women, Hunger, Opinions, and others. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. Roxane was the founding Essays Editor for The Rumpus and is now the site editor and co-owner. You can find her at roxanegay.com.
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    Roxane Gay

    How a Wound Heals

    Last night’s Oscar ceremony and some of the commentary around the ceremony make the best possible case for why diversity matters.

  • Roxane Gay

    Spit and Mud

    What I remember most about church is all the sitting, standing, and kneeling, the stink of incense, the calm of the priest’s voice, the hard wooden pews, and not really understanding why every Sunday, I found myself, alongside my family,…

  • Roxane Gay

    The Better Bombshell

    This week marks the launch of the anthology The Better Bombshell, a collaboration of writers and artists exploring female role models.

  • Roxane Gay

    Today, Enough

    We are crying out for change, for a mental health care system that can truly help the people who soothe their inner torment by reaching for weapons of such destruction. We are crying out for gun control laws that, at…

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    Roxane Gay

    The Rumpus Interview With M. Bartley Seigel

    M. Bartley Seigel has a presence that fills a room. It is no surprise, then, that the prose poems in his debut collection, This Is What They Say, fill the page with a raw sense of place and longing, an…

  • Roxane Gay

    Eleven

    We don’t know how to talk about children anymore. We get so wrapped up in these shallow narratives about children being preternaturally advanced, about little girls wearing make up and dressing provocatively and seducing the camera, about little girls maturing…

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    Roxane Gay

    How We All Lose

    Discussions about gender are often framed as either/or propositions. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, or so we are told, as if this means we’re all so different it is nigh impossible to reach each other.

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    Roxane Gay

    The Whole World, Opened Up

    I don’t really want to know what a man looks like when his face has been cannibalized. I don’t really want to know about this dog-breastfeeding woman. I don’t want to be in the position of being able to judge…

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    Roxane Gay

    Roxane Gay’s Reading Roundup, Fall 2012

    Our essays editor surveys new novels and collections — coming-of-age tales, journeys, and love stories — and looks ahead to forthcoming works.

  • Roxane Gay

    A Matter of Dignity

    Certain constituencies are always shoved aside, always told their issues will be addressed at some nebulous point in the future. During a lengthy debate, to see these issues merit neither discussion nor debate speaks to how little dignity is valued…

  • Roxane Gay

    The Politics of Entitlement

    To be entitled means believing you have an inherent right to something. It is very easy to feel entitled, to feel like we deserve a certain quality of life or valuable opportunities. I don’t know that anyone is immune from…

  • Roxane Gay

    The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion

    There are things that rip my skin open and reveal what lies beneath but I don’t believe in trigger warnings.