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Roxane Gay

112 quotesProfessor · Born Oct 15, 1974 · American · Female

Roxane Gay (born October 15, 1974) is an American feminist writer, professor, editor and commentator. She is an associate professor of English at Purdue University, contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, essays editor for The Rumpus, and co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective. She perhaps best known as the writer of the New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014). She is also the author of the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and Hunger (forthcoming 2017). 2Early life and education Gay was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to a family of Haitian descent. She attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. She began her undergraduate studies at Yale University but dropped out in her junior year to pursue a relationship in Arizona. She completed her undergraduate degree in Nebraska and also earned an MA with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Gay earned a doctoral degree in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University in 2010. The title of her dissertation was, Subverting the subject position: toward a new discourse about students as writers and engineering students as technical communicator

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From “Ayiti”

Gérard spends his days thinking about the many reasons he hates America that include but are not limited to the people, the weather, having to drive everywhere and having to go to school every day.

first lines of books America

Everything I know about my family’s history, I know in fragments. We are the keepers of secrets. We are secrets ourselves. We try to protect each other from the geography of so much sorrow. I don’t know that we succeed.

Family History Sorrow Personal History Ancestors

It is always when I am leaving work that I realize what an odd country Haiti is, with the Internet, computers, fax machines and photocopiers in offices and the people who use them living in shacks with the barest of amenities. We are a people living in two different times.

Haiti Two Times Different Worlds

Progress is not kind and human nature cannot resist the lure of possibility.

Progress Human Nature

He is such a beautiful man, but I do not tell him this. He would take it the wrong way. It is a strange thing in some men, this fear of their own beauty.

Men Relationships Touch Beautiful People

Freedom, it seems, has a price. We are defined by what we are not and what we do not have.

Freedom

You hate yourself for it, but you crave the stranger’s unwanted touch because the fight left in you is a reminder that you haven’t been broken. You haven’t been broken.

Stranger Touch Feeling

From “Alton Sterling and When Black Lives Stop Mattering”

I don’t know where we go from here because those of us who recognize the injustice are not the problem. Law enforcement, militarized and indifferent to black lives, is the problem.

Black Lives Matter protest Movement black lives black lives matter organization

From “Bad Feminist: Essays”

Change requires intent and effort. It really is that simple.

Change Effort Intent

I have never considered compassion a finite resource. I would not want to live in a world where such was the case.

Compassion

When you can’t find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example.

Lead by example

It's hard not to feel humorless, as a woman and a feminist, to recognize misogyny in so many forms, some great and some small, and know you're not imagining things. It's hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you're going to float the fuck away.

feminism Misogyny

Books are often far more than just books.

Books

One of my biggest weaknesses, one that has always shamed me, is that I have always been lonely. I’ve struggled to make friends because I can be socially awkward, because I’m weird, because I live in my head.

No Friends Lonely Socially Awkward H4D-53

Some women being empowered does not prove the patriarchy is dead. It proves that some of us are lucky.

I learned a long time ago that life introduces young people to situations they are in no way prepared for, even good girls, lucky girls who want for nothing. Sometimes, when you least expect it, you become the girl in the woods. You lose your name because another one is forced on you. You think you…

From “Scratch”

Forty percent of my income comes from teaching, thirty percent from speaking, and about thirty percent from writing.

Books Money Writers Writers and money

I love teaching and I love the security of a regular paycheck, and I especially love health insurance.

Books Money Writers Writers and money

I just have a relentless work ethic, I guess.

Books Money Writers Writers and money

From “What do you usually answer when someone says "but...”

Stupid questions don’t deserve my time.

There is such a thing as a stupid question Word Time Your time is valuable

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