MC's Reviews > Bad Feminist: Essays

I realize Roxanne Gay is the patron saint of #Bookstagram - so it's really hard to be in opposition of near universal praise and admit this just wasn't that good. In this essay collection, there are a few gems where Gay talks about how we talk about rape, victims and their predators and other essays where she discusses gender trends in pop culture. But, she made me read through a lot of other bloggish garbage just to get to them.

This book felt like genuine work - I'd slog through an essay about competitive Scrabble tournaments (in which there's one instance of a player surprised that she's a female player - ok wow, talk about your average Tuesday) just to get to an essay full of concepts that I'm already in agreement with. Who are these essays actually for? Then, I have to putter through her insane praise of The Hunger Games, a triumph of complex story-telling apparently (what?), while she takes a big ole' dump on the 50 Shades of Grey series because of shit we have collectively (mostly) recognized as problematic. Is this what it means to be Bad Feminist?

Like most blog posts, this is a very of-the-moment essay collection that now feels dated and petty. At least the audiobook narration was legit.