Difficult Women Summary

Thanks to the publisher for providing me a copy of this ARC via Netgalley.

Difficult Women is a short story collection by Roxane Gay, a feminist writer known for her essay collection Bad Feminist. This is a new release in 2017 and I should have finished reading it in 2016 but I couldn’t. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did. It’s just because this is a short story collection, so it’s easy to read one story, put it down then read another one when I feel like it.

Difficult Women consists of 21 various short stories. Some of them only have two to three pages like Open Marriage and A Pat, and some of them are not. Most of the stories in this collection revolve around women and their struggles. Some have women of color as the main character. Based on what I read, it seems like the stories in this collection have the recurring themes of sexual abuse, racial issue, and child loss. Some of the stories have graphic sexual and violence content though, so this collection, in my opinion, is more suitable for mature reader. Also, trigger warning for sexual abuse.

Basically, the story is written like an article, in which Gay describes certain types of women that often perceived by society as ‘difficult women’. For example, she wrote about crazy women. Then she gave narratives on several traits that crazy women have. What I love about Difficult Women is how instead of showing how difficult a woman can be; it shows that it is difficult being a woman. It is common in society to give label to women that have certain behavior. A woman could be a perfectionist and people would label her as demanding and high maintenance. Maybe, she’s a perfectionist because she’s expected to be a perfectionist. That’s just one example and I’m not sure if it’s a good one. My point is, this is one short story that I recommend to