And “frigid women,” because whenever a woman doesn’t put out when a man wants her to, she’s frigid. “Crazy women”: women are often considered crazy when they call a man after they go on a date. Oftentimes what’s termed crazy by a man is: “Don’t crowd me, let me make all the moves.” I definitely think we have to challenge that. ROXANE GAY: I think there are a lot of labels that women get. It felt like a good way to play with preconceptions.ĮLIZABETH FLOCK: In the book you also identify women by different labels: “loose women,” “frigid women,” “crazy women,” “dead girls” … What was the thinking behind those categories? I thought: Let’s celebrate our difficulties and our humanity. I wanted to celebrate women that might be labeled differently-whether or not they really are-who have no agency when they are labeled in that way. So I wanted to turn it into a positive rather than a negative. ROXANE GAY: Oftentimes the phrase “difficult women” or “difficult woman” is a slander. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.ĮLIZABETH FLOCK: I wanted to start off by asking you about the title “Difficult Women.” In the inscription in the front of the book, you write: “For difficult women, who should be celebrated for their very nature.” Can you talk about what you meant by that?

The second sentence of “Difficult Women” is “I was in a mood.” The last is “You will hear me.” Ahead of the Women’s March on Washington, the author perhaps best known for a collection of essays called “Bad Feminist” sat down with PBS NewsHour to talk about how women are labeled, divisions in feminism today, and why the phrase “difficult women” resonates so strongly after the election. Roxane Gay, feminist, essayist, novelist, comic book writer, keen observer of pop culture and lover of tiny baby elephants, is out with a new collection of short stories, called “Difficult Women.” The collection follows the lives of more than 20 women-from an engineer to a stripper to a woman made of glass-across the country, from Upper Michigan to a Florida subdivision.

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay