Roxane Gay's Difficult Women is certainly an interesting book. Released in January 2017, this short story collection is a follow-up to her massively successful essay collection called Bad Feminist (which was released in 2014). Julia Fesenthal of Vogue described the book as "a misogynist's taxonomy of the opposite sex. On the narrator's short list: loose women, frigid women, crazy women, mothers, and, finally, dead girls," with "magical realism" laced throughout. Gay's stories are about modern America -- particularly women who are both impoverished and well-off. One of the stories follows a stripper who tries to do well in her life. Another follows a black engineer.
At release, Difficult Women was met with astoundingly positive reviews. Writing for The Washington Post, Megan Mayhew Bergman wrote that "One of the book’s greatest achievements is Gay’s psychological acuity in the creation of female characters who are teeming with dissonance and appealing self-awareness." Other reviewers similarly liked the book, with many pointing out how the stories are extremely "complex" but never boring. Those who did not like the book, however, really did not like it. Many negative reviewers pointed out that the book was horribly written and reads like "trash reality television."
