Hey listeners! Welcome to Brown Girls Read podcast. This is your host Daman Tiwana and this is Khyati Thakur, and both of us love reading books. On this podcast, we bring our stories, our culture and our favorite books to you, and we discuss the parts that were most meaningful to us and how we found them interesting or relatable as brown girls.
Today, we are discussing a collection of short stories called Difficult Women which is written by Roxanne Gay, who is also the author of bestselling books like An Untamed State, Bad Feminist and Hunger. Before we begin our discussion Khyati, do you want to give our listeners an overview of this book?
Difficult Women is a collection of short stories focused on women from different backgrounds. The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. For our discussion, we have selected the stories that we liked or related to— for each story, we will give you a short summary and then head on to discussing the parts that we liked or didn’t like.
Before we start I want to mention trigger warning— a lot of these stories touch on abuse and sexual assault, so if that could trigger you then I’d advise skipping reading this. However in this episode, we have selected 8 stories and we have tried to make our discussion not graphic or triggering for our listeners.
Before we start discussing the stories, I want to say that I loved the dedication of this book, which says ‘The book is dedicated to difficult women, who should be celebrated for their very nature.’ ♥️♥️♥️
Yeah, I agree.
The first Story in the book is ‘I will follow you’
In this story we meet Carolina and her sister who were born 1 year apart. When they were 10 and 11 years old, an old man kidnapped both the sisters and raped them for 6 weeks before setting them free. This story is about how this event affected their life.
There is a part in the story where When her sister asks Carolina why she married a man like Darryl, she says – “I will be no good to a really good man and Darryl isn’t really a bad man”. I couldn’t help but think, how many women in the world might have gotten married to a guy because of this reasoning. Just because they have low self esteem, they tend to settle with guys who are way below their standards. And ofcourse events like these, what happened to these sisters, affect their self esteem as well.
That part in the story just made me feel so sad for how women get the short end of the stick usually.. how they learn their worth to be lesser.. how they accept and settle.. It reminded me of a famous quote by Stephen chbosky in The perks of Being a Wallflower: “we accept the love that we think we deserve”, and if only we value ourselves more we wouldn’t settle for lesser men. We wouldn’t waste our time, our energy, our lives hoping for them to change.
The next Story that I’ve selected is The mark of cain
It is about a woman who is married to one of the twin brothers, and these brothers exchange places thinking that she doesn’t know that they do this. Her actual husband isn’t a good man and abuses her, while his twin brother actually loves her and she loves him too.
What was interesting to me in this story was the difference in two brothers— it is mentioned that they had an Abusive father, who abused the kids and also abused the women he was with. But once he died, the boys forgave him for his drinking, his violence, his mistreatment of their mother. And reading that I was thinking How easily men are forgiven! If there was a mother who abused her children like this, she would be unforgiven, both by children and by society because women have such a high standard to live by. I mean women even get punished when they are being abused by abusive husbands, because they didn’t protect the children from being subjected to that. Khyati’s response
Also. This story reminds me of an example often used when explaining learner behavior and choice, it was in ikigai too I think. so the example story goes like: that a drunk man had two sons.. one son never drank in his life, other followed father’s footsteps into alcoholism l. When asked why, the first brother said he saw what alcohol did to his father so he made a vow to not touch it, while the second brother says that it’s because that was the only way he was shown… that’s how I saw the two brothers in this story.
The next story that I want to discuss is Difficult women
I think this short story is my fav so far. Yes, it’s probably my favorite one, too. To me, it describes what all a woman can be. And what all a woman can actually feel and endure in her lifetime. It is divided into different sections explaining the traits, the thought process and the feelings of Loose women, frigid women, crazy women, mothers and dead women.
I loved how she has created these categories and written these descriptors, and so much of it was recognizable. I also liked how she suggests that the labels have been put on us, but we are just women. Stop labeling us!
This is where I finally started loving and understanding her writing I think. The way she has described these women in her words is so different. In our society, being called loose or crazy is offending. But the way women are described in this short story, makes it seem like a normal person. She has made these phrases that are used for women as mainstream and she has made the reader understand that women that you call loose or frigid or crazy are just normal women who are marred, either by their upbringing or their circumstances.
So, like you mentioned, There are different kinds of difficult women: Loose women, Frigid women, crazy women — Which woman did you relate to most? I think I didn’t relate to any woman that is mentioned in this story. But that’s the thing about these stories, her writing is so powerful and so raw .. and it’s interesting but you don’t think of these characters as yourself. I don’t know why. I feel ‘crazy woman’ was the one that comes closest to our existence.
I also want to talk about how, in this story, she has described mothers and how she has made it perfectly normal for mothers to
- feel like they wanted a different gender of the kid or
- feel triumphant (and not guilty) about not being with their kids at school for important events,
- Feel like not being a good person about not wanting kids or not wanting more than 1 kid.
I think this needed to be said out loud and now I believe that no one else could have said it in such a subtle way except Roxanne Gay.
I think so many women have these shared experiences yet this imposed perfectionism makes them feel at loss always— it doesn’t matter how much they do, somewhere they keep feeling they’re not doing enough or they are not good enough.
Next story that I have is North country
In this story, this woman who is a scientist moved to a new town for work, lives alone, and eventually finds love even though she had closed herself off to it. In this story, what I found interesting was the mention of her Indian colleague who repeatedly hits on her, and on occasion even got handsy against her wishes, has a wife back in Chennai but in Michigan he is leaving his options open .. have you ever seen or heard about anything like that? Why do you think that happens?
There are people who are in long distance relationships and I am assuming they cheat on their wives because long distance relationships are hard. And also, it’s difficult to survive in a country where no one speaks your language, no one understands your culture and you have no friends. So it kind of becomes easy for you to justify cheating.
Yeah.. what you are saying can definitely play a role in these situations. But, I have also heard from multiple sources of such guys who would have girlfriends or wives back home but they hide that here because they want to fool around with white women here. They somehow create this moral loophole for themselves and convince themselves that what they’re doing is okay. I believe that comes from a general disregard of women in our culture, and also our entire culture’s fascination with white skin. I recently saw a tik-tok video where a guy and his mom were rating pictures of girls– can you believe it? And not surprisingly, light skin girls we rated higher!
Also, we have commonly heard about men having affairs in India and even having second/third families, and due to the socioeconomic structure of the country they don’t really face consequences right? So in a way this next generation has learned the same I think!
Let’s continue our discussion with next story: La Negra Blanca
The title of the story means the black and white. This story is about a girl called Sarah. She is working as a stripper while pursuing her degree from John Hopkins university. She is a mixed race woman. But her skin complexion is white. She gets raped by her stalker.
I think Roxanne, very subtly, in this story, has managed to underline the point how the act of rape is so different for the culprit and the victim. For the culprit, nothing actually changes. In some communities in India, the culprits are even rewarded by getting them married to their victims in the name of punishment. And even in this story, the culprit didn’t even think once about the horrendous act he has done, instead he gets excited that he has broken a rule in his family history. Because in his family it was taboo to touch black women, let alone sleep with them.
But for the victim, their entire life changes and starts to revolve around that 1 incident. Sometimes they are blamed for arousing the culprit, sometimes they are pitied. And always, it becomes shameful for the victims as if they are the ones who did this to themselves.
That’s the whole victim blaming culture right– we have seen this from our early years.. Where if we were secually harassed on the street, it was somehow our own fault– maybe we were asking for it! Maybe we were dressed in a certain manner, or we looked in a certain manner. And recently in that whole boys locker room incident in delhi school, this was again just so clear– In this Instagram group called boyslockerroomchat, a group of school boys shared inappropriate pictures of girls without consent, objectified them, there were messages suggesting desire to rape and gang rape.. And when this was all exposed, parents of those boys were still defending the rape culture with statements like boys will be boys, or these are young boys being hormonal. And, in the end the girls were still attacked to have such pictures in the first place.. Because if there were no pictures, then boys couldn’t use them. So clearly it’s the girls’ fault!!!
Next Story that I have is Noble Things
In this story, the setup is that southern states of the US have seceded from the country and there’s a wall and fence at the border— reminded me of a certain someone in power. The story focuses on a couple, where the woman is fierce and headstrong, and the husband is sorta submissive by comparison both to her and his family. I love how Anna’s character is written.. especially the part where there’s a family dinner and she wouldn’t quietly sit and listen to bullshit talk of her in-laws. She answered back and because of how fierce she is, everyone just stares nothing more. As a stark comparison It painted a picture of kabhi khushi kabhi gham type movie in my head where no one can dare interrupt the father or father in law (the head of the family), let alone the bahu (daughter-in-law) to be the one talking back. Can you imagine how she would be treated in a typical conservative setup we often see in our culture ?
You know, I thought that I was like Anna in this sense. But I was surprised to see that I wasn’t.
Now I want to talk about the Story How-
This story is about this girl who is stuck in an unhappy marriage and she is saving money to run away from her marriage. She also doesnt want to have kids and it is also hinted that she is bisexual. In this story Roxanne has touched on so many topics. Like bisexuality, infertility, workplace inappropriateness to name a few.
Her reason for not wanting to have kids is because she doesn’t want to end up like her mother with too many children in a small house with too little to eat.
And I am imagining myself having this discussion with my family and giving this reason for not having kids. And I am pretty sure they would call bullshit on that. They won’t even understand this reasoning. In India there is this thinking that everything will make way for you once you have kids. I don’t know why people don’t really understand that if someone doesn’t want to sacrifice their whole lives earning for their kids, it’s okay to not have kids.
I think it’s a very interesting transition point at which the two generations in desi culture are right now. Like the parents’ generation has adopted the comforts of modern life but when it comes to values and principles they keep going back to the “tradition,” possibly because they don’t know another way. And for our generation, those who want to sway from tradition and get more independence they feel constantly being pulled back by those ties. Also I don’t think our culture values independence much, it doesn’t serve the old setup. So whether it’s a choice to marry or have kids or raise kids differently, this tug of war is endless.
The last story that we have is Best Features
This story is about a girl named Milly, and the first sentence is ‘Milly is fat and ugly.’ And, to me, this story is about how she is coping with the way the world treats fat girls. She has extremely low self esteem, she is angry at the world but she doesnt let it out. And she is dating a guy who is obviously a jerk but according to her she has no choice. I agree— this story reminded me of a movie I watched last year called Brittany runs a marathon. In which, Brittany is a fat girls and you see the low esteem portrayed really well— like her thin friends use her as a backdrop comparison for their thinness, when she meets men she just knows they won’t like her the same way they like thin girls and this goes on to affect how she shows up in those situations.
There is this quote that says: “She has a pretty face which is the same thing as ugly when a woman is fat. In the complex calculus between men and women, milly understands that fat is always ugly and that ugly and skinny makes a woman eminently more desirable than fat and any combination such as beautiful, charming, intelligent, or kind.” And I have literally grown up believing this my entire life. Even now, I don’t think the Indian society cares if you’re happy and healthy or not, but they care if you’re skinny or not. It’s almost like everything else except skinny, offends them. In this case I think it’s not just Indian society, it’s most societies. With the exception of a few cultures, fat phobia is a real thing and it affects so many people. If someone is fat, that is automatically translated into an unhealthy person and an ugly person, and an implicit blame is placed on them forever. Have you seen a fat person in a gym— they have so little confidence in those places because they know there are so many eyes on them, judging them, silently asking how did they let it get so far.. and I find it appalling that even when you see that this person is making efforts to become healthier, instead of offering any kindness or support people are just judgemental.
I am wondering how many women would relate to this character Milly. Because it seems like so many would. Because of how society has made her feel about her weight issues, about how she has to fake orgasm ..to the point that sometimes she nearly convinces herself. But she doesn’t say anything. She just keeps it all in. It is too real man! Yep.. this one felt way too real.. and Way too many women are constantly plagued by this. Girls as young as 8-9 years old start eating less because they want to be thin— it’s that pervasive that it’s taking away childhood.
Okay so those are our favorite stories from Difficult Women, and now we want to share why this book gets Brownie Points from us!
👍 This book has so many love stories I would like to see short films of, you know. The characters in these stories are so real, so flawed and yet so intriguing. Loved how well written the characters were in almost all of the stories— real flawed characters, not perfect heroines. I love how she has written pain— so raw, so genuine, so real. I love how she has portrayed the flawed side of humanity, and also the incredible strength at the same time. I would also like to give brownie points to this book because it talks about dysfunctional relationships in a very real way. And it also has some love stories but they look like real life love stories, not some fictional beauty and the beast crap. Like, the kind of love stories that exist after the honeymoon phase is over.
👍 The use of metaphors, such real feeling fiction, one that leaves you thinking. It’s not prescriptive but reflective, you read the story as you are in the moment, you feel it and understand it how you are. I would give Roxanne brownie points for bringing out these beautiful characters of women in extremely bold narrations of their wants and needs. She has touched on so many phases of women’s lives and so many real issues like rape, miscarriages, sexual wants, adultery, infertility, bullying, societal pressures, becoming a mom and so on.
Khyati, are you a marvel movies fan? I love all Marvel movies
For those who are, you would be interested in knowing that Roxane Gay is the greater of the city of Wakanda. I was really psyched when I read this about her!
And in this book, Roxanne gay’s writing is beautiful. Her imagination, her storytelling, and the difficult women in the stories will captivate you. I definitely recommend this book, but please remember that there is sexual assault and abuse in some stories so consider that if you think that could be triggering for you.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Brown Girls Read podcast! If you like what you hear, please leave us a 5-star rating and a comment. You can support us at anchor.fm/browngirlsread/support. Your support will allow us to continue this podcast and bring more episodes to you. Also, Don’t forget to subscribe and follow us on Instagram- browngirlsreadpod, and if you have book recommendations for us, you can leave us a comment or message on Instagram.
For our next episode we’re reading Glennon Doyle’s bestselling memoir, untamed. We hope you’ll be reading with us and until then, Keep listening!
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