Difficult Women

By: Roxane Gay

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Award-winning author and powerhouse talent Roxane Gay burst onto the scene with An Untamed State and the New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial). Gay returns with Difficult Women, a collection of stories of rare force and beauty, of hardscrabble lives, passionate loves, and quirky and vexed human connection.

The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls' fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America reminiscent of Merritt Tierce, Jamie Quatro, and Miranda July.

©2017 Roxane Gay. Produced by arrangement with Grove Atlantic (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Unique

Not at all what I was expecting. But I loved it. Definitely a heavy book with lots of triggers.

Challenging and powerful

Trigger warning: there are many uncomfortable topics explored but ultimately you come away with a new perspective on the definition of a difficult woman.

Intense!

I deeply admire Dr. Gay's writing and how unflinching she is in handling controversial topics. I'm down for anything she writes.

Heart wrenching stories

Each story is so different but they all tie you in with their beautiful and difficult truth.

Love the stories and format

Absolutely love the stories and the backgrounds fleshed out of each women. A must listen for any lover of shifting perspectives in a novel.

A sleeper hit

This entire book reminds me of Common's Electric Circus. there are a bunch of things going on, but they together in a grand masterpiece, but sadly, people slept on it despite its genius.

Exquisitely done...

I really cannot say I enjoyed this but I am glad I listened to this book. It is as real as it gets - about all sorts of different women's experiences - differing perspectives. The pleasure, the pain, the good and the bad and the ugly. Raw and painful. So well done. Some surrealism and AU in here for good measure. Roxane Gay is a major force and it shows in this collection of stories. The narration is light and that lets the power shine through. Don't want to give anything away here. Do yourself a favor and read this collection.

Heartbreakingly honest.

I listened through the whole thing. I thought about my sisters, my friends, and my daughter. I thought about my clients and their mothers and daughters. It is a fierce thing to be female.

This Moved me beyond words.

I can't say enough for this book. Love listening so much I had to actually buy the paperback. I am so touched by the sincerity in each story. I found myself being able to come to terms with a lot just reading this. And Robin Miles your narration was perfect for this.

Harsh, beautiful, striking, raw, and just.... amazing.

Difficult Women

I don't understand the title of the book, when it's had short story after story or strong women. talking about perseverance, making it through bad marriages, abuse, rape, kidnapping, deaths, love lost, still-borns, children dying. The title devalues women, great book. #book29of2020 #bookworm #whatsnext