Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

By Roxane Gay

Edited and with an introduction by Roxane Gay, the New York Times bestselling and deeply beloved author of Bad Feminist and Hunger, this anthology of first-person essays tackles rape, assault, and harassment head-on.

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In this valuable and timely anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence and aggression they face, and where sexual-abuse survivors are 'routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied' for speaking out.

Highlighting the stories of well-known actors, writers and experts, as well as new voices being published for the first time, Not That Bad covers a wide range of topics and experiences, from an exploration of the rape epidemic embedded in the refugee crisis to first-person accounts of child molestation and street harrassment.

Often deeply personal and always unflinchingly honest, this provocative collection both reflects the world we live in and offers a call to arms insisting that 'not that bad' must no longer be good enough.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Release date: Aug 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781760637446

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist; the novel An Untamed State, a finalist for the Dayton Peace Prize; the New York Times bestselling memoir Hunger; and the short story collections Difficult Women and Ayiti. A contributing opinion writer to the New York Times, for which she also writes the “Work Friend” column, she has written for Time, McSweeney’s, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, and Oxford American, among many other publications. Her work has also been selected for numerous Best anthologies, including Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018 and Best American Mystery Stories 2014. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. In 2018 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and holds the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University’s Institute for Women’s Leadership.

Reviews for Not That Bad

[askelmore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Content Note: This book’s subtitle is literally “Dispatches from Rape Culture.”Best for: Those looking for some reassurance and reminders that yes, it really is that bad.In a nutshell: Editor Roxane Gay brings together essays from 30 people (mostly women), all of which address some part of rape culture.Worth quoting:“The part I wanted them to understand is that these equations can implode, constricting your whole life, until one day you’re sitting in a locked steel box breathing through an airhole with a straw and wondering, Now? Now am I safe?”“I wonder if, when it finally stops for good, if it will be too late to relax, if the muscle memory of the harassment will keep me tense on the sidewalk forever.”“Then they will revise backward. They will take every opinion they’ve ever heard from you, every personality train, every action, and recast them in light of what you told them. This will be particularly true of your sexual behavior and your appearance.”Why I chose it:Roxane Gay.Review:I am a writer. I mean, I don’t get paid to write, but I do write. A lot. And I have this essay, still sitting in the ‘ready to pitch’ folder in Scrivener, simply called “Arm Grab,” about the time a random dude grabbed and squeezed my arm and then ran off, and what multiple encounters like that do a person over time. And before reading this book, I probably would have left it in the folder forever because it is just one in a long line of small incidents that I would have described as “not that bad.”This is a book that can be hard to read. It isn’t 30 essays about rape, though — it’s 30 essays about the various ways that rape culture affects women and men. About street harassment, and child abuse, and date rape. Individual stories that are connected by the ways we don’t believe women, or treat them as broken, or at fault, or as liars. The ways we’re taught to be grateful that our experiences don’t matter, don’t affect the ways we navigate this world.The essay that resonated the most with me was “Getting Home,” where author Nicole Boyce talks about how an experience led to her not feeling comfortable walking alone after dark. Like ever. And so much of what she wrote lives in my head. The fear of the sound behind me when I leave the tube station. The keys sticking out through our fingers. My confusion and then sadness when my husband and I go for a walk late in the evening and I don’t want to walk through the park because I wouldn’t do it alone, and I remember that he navigates the world without really having to make those calculations.I’d recommend this to everyone who feels that they’re in a place where they could read it. It’s not light reading, but it wasn’t nearly as challenging a read as I thought it would be.

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Roxane Gay curated this collection of essays on rape culture, so I knew it would be amazing, at least from the writing and the way emotions are vividly and powerfully expressed. This book, however, is also an emotionally exhausting and tragic collection of essays. In each essay - some describing rape, others things like cat calling - the writers (who include men as well as women and transgender persons too) come back to the idea that their experiences weren't "that bad". From the beginning, we know that this is the wrong phrase to use for these kinds of experiences and by the end, the phrase nearly made me angry with its repetition. I don't share all of the experiences details in these essays, I've experienced enough of the pieces (the catcalling essay really resonated with me) for the stories to hit their mark. The essays here are poignant and I hope they encourage a larger change in how we talk and deal with these issues as a culture.

[kendallball · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What made this book so great is also what made it feel like a chore - these stories sound all too similar and familiar...

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A deep dive into rape and rape culture from many different authors and angles.

[drfuriosa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Obviously, this is heavy subject matter. I think the representation of demographics and topics in these essays are excellent, though the quality of writing varies vastly. There are some standout essays, like "All the Angry Women," while others just did not get off the ground, from a prose perspective. It was also hard to read this book for long stretches at a time, but that's because the subject matter is heavy and utterly crushing. I recommend reading this when you have good mental space to process it.

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was excellent, even if I was left very angry afterwards. The amount of rubbish people have to deal with on a daily basis is stupid and people really need to be treated better.

[larryerick · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To be candid, I'm not at all certain I should review this book. It was not targeted to my demographic or my personal experiences. I'm an old straight guy. If someone reading this, wants to skip over it to the next "review," I will not take offense, even if offense at my being a guy is taken. That being said, I will offer a few notes. I won't try to elevate what I have to say to the status of a review. First, about the introduction by the editor, I said to myself, this is really good -- and then I realized none of the rest of the book would be by her. But my disappointment was short lived, because the first essay was beautifully, masterfully written, and, in my mind, set a stage for the highly varying temperament of the overall book. There is a lot of unresolved thought by the authors of the essays, that goes well beyond just deep wounds. The situations that occurred -- or didn't occur, but feared they would -- and the responses received -- or not received -- and the endless need to assess and reassess, and forgive and not forgive, it's all an emotional, intellectual burden for the just the reader. Imagine the writers. The variety of the writing styles and the exact subject matter and the range of emotional levels, with all this, even the most sterile recitations have something to relate that still resonates. Well done, Editor. All in all, I'm very disappointed America's Uncle Joe still doesn't quite get it or that Donnie never will, but I hope this book, as pain filled as it is, will provide some degree of salve for the injuries our society continues to inflict.