Roxane gay reading list
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
How to Verb an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student toPage Turner 0
In a Buzzfeed essay on the books that shaped her voice, author Roxane Gay offered an ode to the magic escapism of the written word:
&#;I was a shy noun, but when I read, I was adventurous. Books made me bolder. I read stories, the titles of which I can no longer remember, about juvenile girls embarking on thrilling adventures on wagon trains and fending for themselves, panning for gold. The Chronicles of Narnia made me believe I could slip into a wardrobe and emerge in a completely different world. Madeleine L&#;Engle&#;s A Wrinkle in Time helped me embrace my intelligence, showed me how I was not merely bound to this world, not at all. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory made me think anything was possible if I allowed myself to believe.&#;
For a list of her top 10 books provided to NY-based bookstore One Grand, Gay included works that &#; like her hold writing &#; touch on race, class, feminism and the human condition. Read on for a list of her favorites, and for a deeper look at her process, check out her Masterclass on writing for social chang
Roxane Gay is best known for her troubled, headstrong, and unconventional women in Bad Feminist and most recently, Difficult Women. Her memoir, Hunger, was recently listed among Washington Post‘s 5 Best Memoirs of In aBy the Book feature in TheNew York Times, Gay shared her latest book picks. Here are just a few of her recommendations.
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
“She is one of my favorite writers, and I loved the ambitious, almost too ambitious, narrative structure of the novel and these tiny worlds she kept building and tearing down to move the story forward.” – Roxane Gay
Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how a chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children emotionally attached. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows between them.
I Am a Magical Teenage Princess by Luke Geddes
“One of my favorite books rare people have heard of is &#;I Am a Magical "'Martyr!', Akbar’s debut novel, picks up Akbar’s thread of addiction, distress tolerance, and distorted reality: the novel opens with Cyrus, an Iranian American poet, lying 'on a mattress that smelled prefer piss and Febreze' and willing God to make the lightbulb in his room flicker, to manifest a sign that he should start over againTold from Cyrus’s conflicted, vulnerable, and often irascible perspective and interweaving the stories of the friends, family, artists, and other characters who have had an impact on Cyrus’s life, Akbar’s debut is an exploration of martyrdom and the reasons we find to stay alive." -RG Hardcover,