Essayist Roxane Gay’s critical voice is booming

At the risk of sounding like I’m “mansplaining”: Female nonfiction writers are having a moment. How do I know this? The literary ether has whispered it for months: Lena Dunham (“Girls”) recently Instagrammed a picture of Megan Stielstra’s book of essays, “Once I Was Cool.” Stielstra, a writing teacher at Columbia College Chicago, saw an uptick in interest for her book, which came out in May. Coincidentally, Dunham’s own book of essays, “Not That Kind of Girl,” is No. 2 on The New York Times’ nonfiction best-seller list; she appeared earlier this month at the Chicago Humanities Festival. Stielstra is appearing at the festival Wednesday, interviewing the memoirist/essayist Cheryl Strayed (“Wild”). And Strayed was recently asked by the Times’ book section:

Are women essayists having a golden age?

In her response, Strayed — not comfortable with drawing distinctions between male and female essayists (but acknowledging that “essayists who happen to be women are having a banner year”) — name-checked a pair of particularly popular young female essayists: Leslie Jamison, whose new collection, “The Empathy Exams,” was a surprise success in the summer, and Roxane Gay, whose own collection, “Bad Feminist,” is becoming ubiquitous. Both were scheduled to appear at the Humanities Festival: Jamison on Sunday at the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts, Gay on Nov. 2 at the Poetry Foundation (until she recently canceled, for health reasons). Strayed and Stielstra are at Northwestern University’s School of Law.

Because, see: golden age.

Strayed could also have mentioned Evanston’s Eula Biss (an earlier festival speaker whose “On Immunity” is one of the best reads of the year) or Patti Smith (appearing Saturday). Or Harvard University historian Jill Lepore (whose new “The Secret History of Wonder Woman” is terrific). Or essayist Rebecca Solnit, whose latest work is, ahem, “Men Explain Things to Me.”

As Stielstra told me, though: “If there is a golden age, Roxane sits at the forefront.”

No doubt: Gay, 40, who taught English at Eastern Illinois University before jumping recently to Purdue University, has been one of the most discussed writers of the year (Time magazine: “Let this be the year of Roxane Gay”).

Born in Nebraska, raised by Haitian parents, her takes on Chris Brown and “The Hunger Games,” literary likability and obesity, have been online rallying points: painful, personal, elliptical, blunt, glib, as familiar to readers of The Rumpus as readers of Salon. London’s Guardian newspaper: “Gay has the voice of the friend you call first for advice.” Or, as Stielstra gushed: “She has set off explosions in me about how a writer should respond to events, as though her thoughts were percolating, waiting for some incident to be expressed.”

Gay on the late coach Jerry Sandusky: “There’s a certain crassness to an alleged pedophile being allowed to defend himself on national television. … Like most people, I gather what legal knowledge I have from a little show called ‘Law & Order.'” Gay on manipulation: “‘The Help’ is, in absence of thinking, a good movie …”

I caught up with the writer several weeks ago in Los Angeles, the morning after a particularly popular night on her book tour. The following interview is from a longer chat, condensed and edited for clarity and length.

Q: Your book tour has been more like a rock-star tour.

A: Last night was one of the most amazing nights of my life. A Friday night in Los Angeles and it’s a bookstore — and downtown, where parking is a pain — and there were 500 people there, standing-room only, people standing in the balconies. And there was a standing ovation at the end. I don’t know what to do with that. In Ann Arbor, the store where I was reading had to turn people away. I sort of knew (the tour) would be well-attended but not like this — you hear horror stories of two people showing up for readings …

Q: And the people who come, they are generally in agreement with you on everything.

A: Definitely. I am totally down with disagreement. I don’t like Haterade, but disagreement is wonderful. When someone disagrees, we try to reach common ground. That’s good. Too often people now think they are right, the end of discussion. A woman came to see me last night who I disagree with a lot. We disagree on Facebook. I had never met her in person and I disagree with everything she says. But we respect each other and I see where she is coming from. There have been good Q&A’s but no debate. People are afraid.

Q: Afraid?

A: Of public disagreement. It’s like they don’t know how to broach it in public. Most of the serious disagreement I get comes through email or social media, where people are more comfortable. I don’t even read comments (on my stories) anymore because it’s out of hand. At least they are taking the time to respond. I don’t want to become that person who is too good to respond, but there are only so many hours in a day, and sometimes when I have written an essay I have said my piece. In person, at readings, there are the people who don’t have a question, only a statement. They want to be heard. Like, “I am a feminist and I am interested in global economic disparity …” I smile, but in my head: “OK, here we go, something about you.” These people often don’t realize they are not disagreeing so much as flailing. They look nervous.

Q: You intimidate them.

A: I cut an imposing figure. I am large and I’m tall and I have tattoos. I am actually really quiet and shy but maybe people see me and they don’t want to step out of line, or equate disagreement with stepping out of line with a writer they like. We’re docile, we too often have to agree with the flavor of the week or we’re not cool. It sets up people unfairly in discouraging ways when they have genuine questions or issues with something a writer has said or written. There are also the people who exploit that situation, the ones who think they are saying what everyone else is thinking, who think they are the Robin Hood of the real truth. I do admit: It’s hard to hear negative comments of my work. But I am not doing this to encourage agreement.

Q: Your reviews have been mostly positive.

A: They have, though actually, the Chicago Tribune gave me a negative review. It said I say a lot of obvious things, which hurts, but it was a thoughtful review — just not, marketingwise, a good review.

Q: Have you noticed even as online culture supposedly gives everyone a voice now, and reviews in general migrate online, it can often feel as though everyone agrees and says the same things?

A: Absolutely true. It’s funny, though: There’s a faction of people online who think my writing is leading a “Let’s accept everything” wave, as if I am arguing that we accept all pop culture. Well, no. I want people to treat each other as equals. I save my “I love this” essays for Goodreads, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enthusiasm. I wrote a piece last year about “literary citizenship,” and said it was important to be consumers and supporters of literary culture. Because there are writers who just vomit their words into the universe then walk away. The critic Jacob Silverman has a book coming out (in 2015) that deals with what he feels is an overwhelming niceness in online culture. I think that’s the kind of thing a white man can say.

Q: Why?

A: White men don’t receive the same level of (expletive) that women and people of color do online. They don’t see the harassment. Of course they see a yes-man culture. They’re not having their physical appearances — “You’re ugly,” “You’re fat” — brought up. They are not even aware of the real world. It’s adorable. Writing about literary culture, they seem to be protecting literary truth. They have good points: Critical rigor is important, what the Internet is doing to rigor is not small. I would just to like to see an awareness that others live in this world, that the subject is about more than a notion of literary integrity.

Q: As you said that, I remembered how often I thought that some of your points in “Bad Feminist” felt a little vague. Maybe what some readers mistake as a blanket endorsement of quality is, actually, an endorsement that something simply exist. Your love for the movie “The Best Man,” for example: It seems to be at least partly about a necessity for everyday images of black people.

A: Right, the struggle narratives we get (in movies) become frustrating to me. I understand why those movies are made. I just want more movies about groups of friends with lives, who are fully fleshed humans. The bar is not set very high! Movies where black people get to be people, I want more of those. I also want the lighthearted and intense equally, because it wouldn’t make me happy as a writer, or a person, to only be into fluff, or to only like a more rigorous, serious culture. It wouldn’t be intellectually honest to pretend that I think differently.

Q: Do you see yourself as a public intellectual now?

A: No, but I keep getting called that.

Q: Because a lot of people would like to see public intellectuals return to our culture mix.

A: And I get that. I love writers so deeply engaged with the culture you want to hear their take on everything. But I don’t think we should put opinions on demand, that our favorite writers should bleed for those opinions.

Q: Do you feel your opinions being demanded?

A: Yes. People constantly want to know what I think of this TV show or that show, and the sad thing is I know what they’re talking about. I watch a ridiculous amount of television. But it’s also frustrating. You can’t respond to everything. Weigh in on everything and you stand for nothing. I get a lot of requests (from publications) to write about Gaza. I am concerned and horrified by what is happening in Gaza, but I know nothing about Gaza. You want a writer for the quality of their thoughts, not the quantity. Ferguson? I know what it’s like to be black in the Midwest, to be pulled over for nothing. But I will not be a think-piece robot.

cborrelli@tribune.com

Twitter @borrelli