Difficult Women, by Roxane Gay.
I honestly don’t have the language to communicate how much I love this book. I wish I could remember every single story cellularly. I wish I could hear it being read aloud wherever I go. I wish I could recite it. It’s on my Kindle; it’s on my coffee table. It is my favorite book I’ve read this year thus far, and it is an all-time favorite of mine.
From where I sit a few feet from my coffee table, I’m recalling my favorite stories off the top of my head: I Will Follow You, Difficult Women, La Negra Blanca, Florida, North Country, Break All the Way Down, and Strange Gods.
One thing, amongst many, that I got from this book was that behind these women and their “difficult” title was a man or a circumstance that made them that way. I’m forever drawn to narratives of all kinds that depict women as crazy, mad, unhinged, unruly, and difficult because I love women—I love us—in all of it, whatever it is. And I want us to have the freedom (and the protection) to explore the entire spectrum of our emotions, to have someone and somewhere safe we can lay those emotions down, to pick those emotions up and make art, love, children, money, memories from them.
This book is so important to me, and I do hope you decide to indulge.