The Author’s Bookshelf: Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is the author of the novel An Untamed State, which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction; the essay collection Bad Feminist; and Ayiti, a multi-genre collection. Her newest book, Difficult Women, is a collection of short stories around women in challenging situations. She is at work on a memoir, Hunger, and a comic book in Marvel’s Black Panther series. Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, the New York Times, the Guardian, and many others. She is a recipient of the PEN Center USA Freedom to Write Award, among other honors. She splits her time between Indiana and Los Angeles. She can be found online at www.roxanegay.com and on Twitter @rgay. She shared 50 of her favorite books with us, and expanded on her top 5
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Sometimes, when I read a novel, I want to not only lose myself, I want to be utterly devastated. A Little Life is one of those books that is devastating. There is grief upon grief to be found in these pages but also the joys of a lifelong friendship between four men as they grow up and try to become the men they most want to be.
NW by Zadie Smith
NW is sprawling and multi-layered and audacious and experimental and a novel I keep coming back to, because it is just so smart and stylish.
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton is my favorite writer and her incisive indictments of the wealthy class she was a part of, are endlessly interesting to me. I also love her gorgeous descriptions and any story about unrequited love, and this is very much a story about unrequited love, is right up my alley.
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
Yuknavitch upends expectations of what a memoir should look like as she remakes time and language and examines her life, the beauty and ugly and raw and the love and hurt, all of it flowing from one page to the next like water. This is a book to drown in.
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Citizen is a book that bears witness to the realities of blackness in America. This is not just poetry, it is testimony and it is necessary.
Roxane’s Gay latest book Difficult Women was published by Grove Press. Shop her full bookshelf here!
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