I just finished Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, a collection of essays edited by Roxane Gay.
(image from Amazon.com)
If you can bear to read it, I recommend it. I found it a good one to have in progress at the same time as another, lighter book, so that I could switch; I don’t usually like to have more than one book going, but sometimes I would finish an essay and REALLY NEED A BREAK, and it was good to have something else to read for awhile.
Placing it on hold at my library now.
I like her Twitter feed, also. She must be incredibly strong to deal with the crap the Twitterverse throws at her.
Thanks, Swistle. I read her personal memoir, Hunger, a year or so ago, and it was also searing but very, very good. That one deals with her experience of rape and how it contributed to her desire to create a body that was safe from assault. My first exposure to her was Bad Feminist, another essay collection. She always teaches me something new.
I have this and have been working up to reading it because I know it will be upsetting. I feel like it was easier to read this sort of thing when the news/state of world wasn’t already so bleak. Her memoir, Hunger, was phenomenal if you haven’t read it.
I keep looking back to see if you’ve gotten additional comments, and when I see that you haven’t, I wonder if the rest of us are all setting our jaws and thinking, “Right. That’s an important book. I *will* read it. I will. That’s how adults behave.”
Because I will read it. I will. I am not going to be a Fragile White Lady.
And I want Roxane Gay to earn All the Royalties.
I’ve been doing the same …