Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay is Dua’s Monthly Read For March for the Service95 Book Club. While Dua's conversation with Roxane dives into the book’s themes and ripple effect on modern culture, below, writer, author and podcaster Ashley C Ford shares a personal insight into the celebrated writer. Here, she reflects on what it’s like to work closely with Roxane, and the impact of her guidance on Ashley’s own writing.
Before college, I assumed my career options were to either go into the ‘family business’ of law enforcement or get lucky enough to become Oprah. Being a Black girl in small city Indiana, when I saw people who looked like me seeming to thrive in their work, they were either wearing a uniform (suits included) or standing in front of an audience on television. Yet I had no fire in me for patrolling the streets or hearing an audience clap for me. My mind burned with the stories I wanted to tell. I believed this desire, an ember glowing in the depths of my being, had only me to keep it lit until I could find the air it needed to spark.
If my school days felt airless, collegiate life became a wind tunnel. In my hunger for the freedom of options, I tried to do everything. I joined several student organisations, changed my focus of study seven times and completed at least three summer internships in wildly different industries. After all that intellectual exploring, I couldn’t deny that writing wasn’t just what I wanted to do, it was the only thing I wanted to do for work. It was an art I needed to make.
While I didn’t necessarily require a well-worn path to follow, I did need a light to walk toward; a reason to believe that giving myself over to a creative life didn’t also mean condemning myself to poverty and invisibility. What I needed was that constant source of air to turn my spark of creativity into a flame I could share with the world. When I said this to my favourite poetry professor, he mentioned one name that changed everything for me: Roxane Gay.
What I needed was that constant source of air to turn my spark of creativity into a flame I could share with the world
Most of the people I meet know Roxane from her prolific and dynamic work on the page, which I began to hungrily work my way through soon after as I heard her name. She is the author of at least eight full-length books; three game-changing and best-selling collections of fiction and essays, including Bad Feminist; and dozens of stories, ranging from heist thrillers to mysteries. She edited the Best American Short Stories 2018 and the Selected Works of Audre Lorde. She’s the co-founder of the original PANK literary magazine; the founding essays editor and now co-owner of The Rumpus; a contributing opinion editor at The New York Times; a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow; and the current Gloria Steinem endowed chair at Rutgers University.
Yes, Roxane Gay is one of the most significant literary figures of our generation, and one of the most insightful and trusted thought leaders and cultural critics of our time. But in 2010, she was a professor at Eastern Illinois University (her first book, Ayiti, was published a year later), and I was the biggest fan she had yet to meet.
The moment I got the chance to meet Roxane, I did. And it didn’t take long. One of my good friends started a small community arts project called Vouched Books, which included short reviews of independent texts and hosted a few literary readings each year. Roxane not only invested money in his work, she accepted his invitation to a live reading. My young writer friends and I piled into two cars and caravanned to Indianapolis to see her.
Two months earlier, we had been new classmates, but after I shared a short story from Roxane in a small group online, we quickly bonded over our enjoyment of her work and the hope we all carried to maybe someday write like her. For me, it was even more than that. As the only Black person in either car that day, I wanted more. I wanted her encouragement. I wanted her to believe in me. And I could only cross my fingers and hope.
After that first meeting, Roxane did more than encourage me. She kept in touch. I was so afraid of bothering her, of being inconvenient or burdensome, but the fact of her attention made me feel that less and less so. And when I wrote something, an essay that made me feel like I was being as brave in my writing as she always was, she asked me if she could edit and publish it, and I said yes. My first publication, my heart on the page, chosen by the person who made me believe it was possible in the first place. Without formality or confirmation, that was the moment she became my mentor. That was when I knew I had a light to work towards while I walked my own path.
That light kept my crippling anxieties and insecurities at bay when I texted her about payment rates, emailed her about disappointments and asked her for recommendations or just a general idea of what to do next. That light helped me find my agent, helped me sell my own bestselling book, Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir, and let me sleep in its guest room when the whole world felt dark. As that light stayed on, my ember grew to a flame – and my mentor became my friend.
Described by publications such as LitHub and many others as “a champion of other writers”, Roxane Gay occupies a singular place in contemporary society as both a passionate, bold and uncompromising advocate for systemic political and cultural change and an unpretentious, witty and often compassionate advocate for understanding the nuances of our human experiences and actions. Roxane walks the walk. And when you are, as I have often been, on the receiving end of that kind of kindness and compassion, it’s easy to believe it’s an experience singular to you. But it’s never been only me. Former students, former employees and more writers and artists than I can name off the top of my head have directly benefitted from the guidance and support of Roxane Gay.
With everything she does – and always in her humble, self-implicating, generative and honest way – Roxane inspires all of us to be better versions of ourselves. I am better because I know her and always will be. May the light she lends us all be the light we continue to shine for others.
