The protagonists of her stories are not always black or brown, nor always women, but they are, all of them, complicit in the infliction or perpetration of intimate violence, racked by secret desires and seething rage. Manifestations of all of these very private American realities can be found in the pages of Difficult Women, Roxane Gay’s debut short story collection. But the violence of exclusion is not limited to our public institutions: Racism, and reflexes learned in response to it, seep deep into our inner lives and shape our most intimate relationships. Many analyses of the riven edges of American race relations have been astute and revelatory, exposing realities that have been for too long omitted from public debate. Much has been written about the insularity of white America, particularly since then. DIFFICULT WOMEN by Roxane Gay Grove Press, 272 pp., $25.00
