The world of Roxane Gay: A fierce voice in what she calls 'an age of inelasticity'
CBC Radio | Posted: November 17, 2020 9:33 PM | Last Updated: July 2, 2021
‘Why do we worship at the altar of forgiveness? I think about that quite a lot...it's important to push back.’
*Originally published on November 17, 2020.
Warning | Content includes rape and profanity.
Roxane Gay likes to joke that even her opinions have opinions — which comes in handy for her often searing opinion column in The New York Times. And there are many other corners to the best-selling Haitian-American's literary talents, including writing World of Wakanda for Marvel Comics, the non-fiction collection of essays, Bad Feminist, the novel, An Untamed State and her moving memoir, Hunger, which explores the brutal realities of rape and obesity.
And while she is fond of dark explorations, her work ranges from sharply witty to deeply sensual.
As part of Halifax's AfterWords Literary Festival, IDEAS producer Mary Lynk spoke online in a public conversation with Ms. Gay. The topic ranged from surviving gang rape, emboldened racism and what she calls the 'fetishizing of forgiveness.'
Here are some excerpts from their conversation, as well as some additional audio readings by Roxane Gay not included in the program.
'Empowered' racism
You've written about your country saying it will break your heart at every possible turn, but you've also said and written that somehow this moment feels different in terms of, I assume, the protests and Black Lives Matter. How so?
I think for the first time, we're seeing a truly broad coalition of people not only in the United States but abroad who are saying: "Enough is enough." The instances of white supremacy and police brutality that we have seen this year, last year, the year before. I mean, these are not new things but I think that they are starting to get so egregious that everyone is realizing, 'Oh, my goodness, there really is a problem.'
Between George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, I think that was finally, for some people enough. And of course, it's really actually quite pathetic that it took that. But here we are. I don't know what's going to happen, but I do know that the protests were significant and are significant and are still actually happening in a lot of cities. People are not letting this go. They are not saying that everything is okay because everything is indeed not okay.
I don't know how much you know about Nova Scotia, but we have a large historic Black community here … There was a woman called Viola Desmond, who is a big hero in Canada. She challenged racial segregation at a cinema. She's buried in Halifax and [a sign pointing to her grave stone was vandalized] with offensive racist words. So it feels like times are changing, but times are also speeding up in terms of racism being really blatant.
I don't know how much you know about Nova Scotia, but we have a large historic Black community here … There was a woman called Viola Desmond, who is a big hero in Canada. She challenged racial segregation at a cinema. She's buried in Halifax and [a sign pointing to her grave stone was vandalized] with offensive racist words. So it feels like times are changing, but times are also speeding up in terms of racism being really blatant.
Well, I think what's happening is that there are a lot of racist white people who feel threatened and who don't know what to do with that feeling. And so they're acting out in truly unacceptable ways and they're pushing back and they're demonstrating their racism.
But I also think it's important to note that they feel empowered. They feel emboldened not only in the United States, we're seeing it in Europe, certainly in Canada — they can finally come out of the racist closet that they've been skulking in for the past while ... I wish I had the energy to pity these people because they are pitiable, but for now, I'll just make fun of them.
The altar of forgiveness
What did you write? You wrote something about forgiveness recently, you're not a big fan of the word or you're a bit sick of it.
No, that's not it. I am. I think that we fetishize forgiveness as a culture. I think that any time a terrible person demonstrates weakness or humanity or even a modicum of contrition, people are like, 'Oh, let's forgive them.' We saw this with Dylann Roof in South Carolina after he walked into a church, prayed and then murdered a great many Black people. We saw it with Donald Trump where people were saying, even recently, 'let's forgive him for the past four years because he has COVID' that he could have not gotten.
So why do we worship at the altar of forgiveness? I think about that quite a lot. I think it's important to push back. Forgive if you want. Forgiveness — I do think that there's a place for it but I do not think that everything is forgivable, and I do not think that we have to forgive to live full lives.
Raped at 12
This is difficult, but you've written about it. And the age of 12, you write that your life was cleaved in two — and that means before the rape and after the rape. And it was then that a boy who you thought was your boyfriend led you to a cabin in the woods where he and several other boys raped you.
What I found incredibly moving when I read your writing on this is how you describe yourself as, "the girl in the woods" — that Roxane is such a powerful line. What does that line mean to you?
Well, you know, being raped was a very significant moment in my life — and in a bad way.
In many ways, I was changed. I was one girl before it happened and then after I was the girl in the woods, who was alone and who was screaming for help and no one came. And so to have your life be so neatly cleaved into two very distinct eras, it can be overwhelming because you remember who you were before — and you always wonder who you would be if this terrible thing had not happened. And just using the phrase 'the girl in the woods,' I think demonstrates just how significant the break was, and just how irrevocably my life was altered.
I have a very close relative who was raped when she was 12 and and she's in her 80s now, and she told me once, that she never goes a day, that she doesn't think about the rape. What is your relationship today with the memory of the trauma from when you were 12? How does it affect you today?
Well, I wrote this in my memoir as well, I think that I'm as healed as I'm ever going to be. I do think about it every day. But am I as traumatized as I once was? No. Because I'm in therapy and I've had a lot of time and distance — and a lot of emotional work in dealing with it. But it's something that will stay with me forever. And that's really frustrating because I would like to believe that I'm over it and that those men don't have any power over me — and they don't — but what they did, does. That's frustrating, but I am doing very well for myself, I would say.
You wrote that you prefer the word 'victim' over 'survivor,' why is that?
I think anyone should call themselves whatever they feel is most appropriate. I really am a big believer in people being able to name their experiences and name who they are.
For me, it was really important to acknowledge that I was once a victim, that I was victimized and I have survived it. And so, yes, you could call me a survivor, but I don't personally want to erase what happened, and I don't want them wherever they are to ever forget that I remember, and that I know, and that they don't get to walk away scot free.
Do you ever think of what you'd want to say to the boy, or the man now, that raped you? Because I know that you've called, I know you've tracked him down, you haven't talked to him. Does that urge to talk to him still exist within you?
There's always going to be a part of me that wants to confront him.
I didn't know the other men. They went to school a few years ahead of me, all of them. So I recognize them, but I don't know their names, which also haunts me. But I would love to be able to confront, certainly the boy I thought was my boyfriend. And I've given it a lot of thought. I mean, I think mostly I would just say, f**k you. I don't have anything particularly eloquent to say.
I would also want him to know what you did changed me, and it hurt me, and I still feel the effects of that. But at the same time, I recognize that if he was capable of doing that, nothing I say is going to make him apologize. And I think that any time you want to confront your rapist, or someone who has victimized you, what you're really looking for is an apology. You're really looking for an acknowledgement that they know the extent of the suffering that they caused. And there is no combination of words that's going to get that for me. So that's frustrating.
The body's truth
After you were raped, you started to gain weight. That was sort of your solace — food — and it became a major issue. It's difficult being a large woman in society. Society is cruel about that. So you wrote a searing memoir of your body called Hunger, and you said that that writing about your body was harder than writing about your rape. Why is that?
Because I live in my body every single day, and I know that people make judgments about me and my body and what they think and who they think I am. And so to write about it, and tell the truth of my body, knowing that people would take that information and corrupt it in some way, and judge it even more than I am already judged. To tell them the truth of my body, especially at the time, it was really, really challenging. It was really terrifying.
But I also felt like I've never really read a book about fatness that does not centre on weight loss. And I didn't want to centre on weight loss, so I did it anyway, despite being terrified about it.
The world of comic writing
You wrote a comic series for Marvel and it was about an all female fighting guard for Black Panther's Wakanda, which is pretty cool. But it was cancelled in 2017 after only six issues. And I read somewhere that a Marvel VP said that Marvel had learned from retailers that diversity hadn't been selling, which caused an angry backlash. What was your reaction at the time to the cancellation?
World of Wakanda was always planned as a six issue series. It would have been great for it to continue. Marvel, I don't think quite understands how to market comics to my audience because a lot of people like myself, when I started writing comics, I had no idea how to buy comics, where to go, how to navigate a comic book store. It's actually different from a traditional bookstore.
And so I think it's disappointing that corporations like Marvel support diversity and they do give opportunities to writers like myself, Gabby Rivera, Saladin Ahmed, but they don't necessarily follow through beyond that. And it's unfortunate because I feel like my comics sold pretty well and it would have sold even better if they had tried to reach out to people beyond comic book readers.
But I also think that just because an audience is averse to diversity doesn't mean that you don't proceed with diversity, that the problem is not diversity. The problem is that some people read narrowly and they need to get their s**t together.
*Q&A was edited for clarity and length.
Roxane Gay is a Haitian-American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. She has written fiction, non-fiction, short-fiction, essays and recently edited The Selected Works of Audre Lorde. Gay is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and is also the founder of Tiny Hardcore Press. Her writing has been honoured with two Lambda Literary Awards, the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in General Nonfiction, a PEN Center USA award, and an Eisner Award for World of Wakanda (with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Alitha Martinez). The best-selling author has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects.
This conversation was dedicated to Charles R. Saunders
Saunders left the U.S. during the Vietnam War and made his home in Halifax. He was a well-known Black writer and journalist and unbeknownst to many, he was also a well-respected author of a series of science fiction novels. He died alone, at age 73, in his apartment in May 2020.
Saunders was buried in an unmarked grave. News of his death didn't reach his friends until the fall, when a go fund-me campaign raised money for a proper burial and possible scholarships in his name. Read more about him, here.
**This episode was produced by Mary Lynk.