Not That Bad

“The lauded social critic and provocateur curates a diverse and unvarnished collection of personal essays reckoning with the experiences and systemic dysfunction that produced #MeToo.” – O, the Oprah Magazine

“From the author of Bad Feminist and Hunger (drop everything if you haven’t read this) comes a collection of first-person essays about rape, assault and sexual harassment. It couldn’t be more timely. Gay’s introduction moved me to tears, as did many of the pieces contributed by household names–Gabrielle Union, Ally Sheedy–but accounts from “regular” women moved me even more. Perhaps that’s the lesson we’re meant to take away from Not that Bad: we’re all “regular.” Shocking as they are, many of these stories will be familiar to us all–and we all deserve better.” – Elisabeth Egan, “The 17 Best Books to Read this Summer,” Glamour

“A profoundly personal anthology.” – Harper’s Bazaar

“Critical reading.” – Paste Magazine, “The Best Nonfiction Books of 2018”

“This is a devastating book, heartbreaking in how familiar and relatable each story is–yet there’s power and solidarity in it, too.” – Shondaland

“Not That Bad is essential reading.” – Refinery29

“A timely, necessary anthology.” – PureWow

“Timely… . It is a critical work that makes this much clear: The violations #MeToo rages against can and do damage people for a lifetime.” – The Globe and Mail

“It’s hard to imagine a more fitting editor for a collection like this… everyone should read it.” – Brooklyn Rail

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.