Global Women and their Impact: Roxane Gay
/Every woman can make a difference, and we all do, in our own unique way. We have an impact on our family, our children, friends and coworkers. And they influence us - how much have we learned from our mothers, grandmothers, siblings and best friends, even if we sometimes don’t want to admit it?
In our blog series “Global Women and their Impact” we want to introduce women from different countries and show how they have influenced society, the entrepreneurship and business world and their industry.
North America: Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is an Haitian-American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. One of her most famous books is the best-selling essay collection “Bad Feminist” (2014), a collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism. Additionally, she also published the short story collections “Ayiti” (2011) and “Difficult Women” (2017), the novel “An Untamed State” (2014) and the memoir “Hunger” (2017). Her work focuses mainly on women's rights, race and identity.
She has gained international acclaim for her reflective exploration of feminism and social criticism. 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).
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Roxane began writing essays as a teenager, with much of her early work influenced by her experience with childhood sexual violence. She continues to use writing to untangle and communicate her own trauma, and encourages young women and aspiring writers on how to harness their voice through their written words.
Much of Gay's written work deals with the analysis and deconstruction of feminist and racial issues through the lens of her personal experiences with race, gender identity, and sexuality.
Roxane jokes that even her opinions have opinions, which is a vital skill for her current opinion column in the The New York Times.
If you want to learn more about her work, sign up for her newsletter “The Audacity” or listen to her podcast “The Roxane Gay Agenda”.
Global Women of Impact is a blog series that features influential women around the globe and how they each made a difference in their field. Written by Nina Bader, Diversity & Inclusion Facilitator and Martha Fallon, Social Media Coordinator, Young Women in Business Vancouver.