Difficult Women by Roxanne Gay – The Women who will Survive

Difficult Women is a  collection of 21 short stories that talk about difficult women, often called ‘crazy’.

Review

Difficult Women gives a voice to  women who have been silenced or have been forced to live in a certain way by the patriarchy or the society or their inability to let out their fury. The women talk in this book everything that is in their minds – and they are crazy, unreasonable and demand their rights; they are ‘difficult women’. Some stories in the collection are as short as one page and some are longer. A quick look at some of the stories –

The Mark of Cain is the story of twins who often exchange their lives and partners and the wife of one falls in love with the husband’s twin.

In La Negra Blanca,a mixed-race med student works as a stripper. She is fetishized by men who think of her as a white girl with a black girl’s ass.

In Break All the Way Down, a woman whose young child was killed in an accident distances herself away from her kind and loving husband. She finds another  man who will hurt her which in turn gives her a sense of peace as she loves the punishment.

In Baby Arm, the narrator, who is part of an all-girl’s fight club, is dating a window-display designer who brings her gifts of baby mannequin limbs. It was a an eerie but an honest read.

Bone Density is about a marriage where both the husband and the wife have found love elsewhere, and still stay together. The husband’s infidelity is well known to the wife and she often leaves him reminders of his infidelity (such as a photograph etc) so that he knows that she knows.

Bad Priest talks about a priest who gets obsessed with a woman and cannot stop himself from yielding himself to having sex with her.

In Requiem for a Glass Heart, a stone thrower marries a woman made of glass: “He was the first man who did not see through her.”

Open Marriage is about a man who asks his wife if he can have an open marriage and she agrees, though she doesn’t tell him all her thoughts.

North Country is the story of a woman who is constantly asked if she is from Detroit at her new workplace. She starts counting the number of times she is asked the question.

I enjoyed some of the stories, not all. The writing is wonderful in all of them. But since the themes often repeat I felt the stories end up being a little too similar; so it felt like a gentle blur. Also, I felt the men in the stories are largely the one-dimensional, stereotypical males. Gay’s writing is visceral, always in extremes. She has the wonderful knack of writing simple sentences that expose the brutality in the stories. She deals with difficult women and their difficult situations with an iron fist. She doesn’t shy away from speaking the truth even though it can be uncomfortable. I like Gay’s approach of delving into the thoughts of the women in the stories while narrating their stories. It makes them seem more real and their situations more frightening. Personally, I enjoyed the fantastical stories in the collection more. I like how Gay weaved in a magical aspect in those stories.

Final Verdict

This collection is not for the faint hearted. There are stories of women claiming their rights, adulterous love, infidelity, women who stop adjusting to pain and violence in relationships and women who know that being difficult is the only way they can survive in the world.

Trigger Warning – The book has explicit sex scenes, violent sex and rape. The story Bad Priest involves a priest having sex inside a church.

Title : Difficult Women
Author : Roxanne Gay
Publisher : Corsair
Published : 2017
Language : English
Pages : 272
Rating : 3/5

Disclaimer : Much thanks to Corsair for a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.