Roxane Gay on Her New Essay Collection “Opinions”

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Thanks Bianna. Roxane Gay, thank you so much for joining us.

ROXANE GAY, AUTHOR, “OPINIONS”: Thank you so much for having me, Michel.

MARTIN: Do you remember why you first started sharing your opinions publicly and online? Do you remember what motivated you?

GAY: Yeah, it started a long time ago, even before social media. I would go on bulletin boards in the old days of the internet, and it was great to be able to connect with people. You know, for people of my generation, the internet was truly a marvel. You could be sitting in a dorm room in Connecticut and you could talk to someone who was like a ham radio enthusiast in Phoenix or in some other country. And that was really interesting to me. And when you found an affinity group with people that cared about the same kinds of things that you did, you could have all kinds of interesting niche conversations online that you couldn’t really have anywhere else. And so it started there for sure.

MARTIN: And it wasn’t – like all the bad stuff hadn’t started yet this

GAY: This was well before the bad stuff. And it’s not to say that it was a paradise. I mean, there were always strange people and, you know, certainly no shortage of predators, but it wasn’t the sort of toxic miasma that social media has become now. And I definitely miss those days. I think most of us do.

MARTIN: Well, you write across a number of platforms. I mean, you write about activism, you write about race, you write about gender, you write about work life issues, which is, you know, interesting. But one thing, one thing that I notice comes up a lot is speech itself and the way speech works, you know, right now. I mean, whether you’re talking about student activism or jokes by comedians or racist hate speech, you’re talking about, you’re asking people to kind of make distinctions among different kinds of speech. And I was just wondering why you think that comes up a lot or comes up as much as it does?

GAY: Primarily we’re dealing with this sort of open air bazaar of ideas on the internet, which means that all kinds of people with all kinds of perspectives are coming to the table. And some of those perspectives are noxious and dangerous. And of course, when you believe in freedom of speech as I do, it means that those kinds of speech are going to be around, but it doesn’t mean that we have to tolerate them in the spaces that we inhabit. And so I think quite a lot about how we care for the spaces that we are a part of, and what kinds of limits and guardrails we’re gonna put around those spaces to protect them. Not to make them safe, because I don’t think safety exists, but to create places where you know that you are not going to have to engage with bigotry in ways that are just unproductive.

MARTIN: You know, one of the things that I find really interesting though is that you’re constantly asking people to think with a little bit more complexity. I’m thinking about this, one of the pieces in the collection, “The Seduction of Safety, on Campus and Beyond,” which was in the New York Times in 2014, and it talks about the difference between censorship and consequences. You wrote, “As a writer, I believe the first amendment is sacred. The freedom of speech, however, does not guarantee freedom from consequence. You can speak your mind, but you can also be shunned. You can be criticized. You can be ignored or ridiculed. You can lose your job. The freedom of speech does not exist in a vacuum.” But you also go on to say that every consequence doesn’t have to be the same and then you call people to sort of make some distinctions. And I was just, I was, you know, this seems to be something that, that you’ve returned to. And I’m just interested in why you think you have to, for one thing, why it’s so important to you and why you think you have to keep talking about it.

GAY: Well, I think it’s important because so many people misunderstand the First Amendment. They think that the right to free speech means the right to publish a book, the right to be on a private social media network saying any old thing. And that’s not at all what free speech means. It means that you won’t be arrested by the government for what you say. And so we have to bring nuance to these subjects because not only do we have to acknowledge that, but the consequences for free speech, there should be a range of consequences. The idea that everyone who missteps, and I’m not just talking about saying something you disagree with, I’m talking about, you know, actual hate speech, death threats, rape threats, and the like. You know, there should be consequences. But we have to figure out what is the appropriate consequence for whatever the thing is, instead of assuming that we can just sort of take a broad hammer to a singular nail, that’s not really how it works. And for whatever reason, we have not gotten there yet in terms of public discourse, in terms of figuring out sort of like, what do, how do we manage scale and proportion? We just ha – we’re not there yet.

MARTIN: I was curious about what you think about the moment that we are in now where we’re finding college students, law students, having job offers withdrawn because they participated in demonstrations that some people felt were, or wrote a letter or signed a letter that some people were offended by.

GAY: I think it’s a problem. I think it’s real – I think it’s really straining the sort of boundaries of credulity that we’re gonna punish college students for standing up for what they believe in. Now, if those college students are behaving in ways that are Islamophobic or anti-Semitic, yeah, you probably don’t deserve a job at the end of that journey. But that’s not really what’s happening. I think in many instances, we’re seeing college students who right or wrong, are advocating for what they believe in and what they believe in, we should all believe in, which is an end to atrocity, an end to genocide, a ceasefire. And so are – what kind of condition are we in as a people if we think that’s a bridge too far? You know, I think we really have to sort of have that kind of check in with ourselves because I think some moral compasses are wildly off.

MARTIN: I wanted to go back for a second and ask about you. Like, do you remember the first time something you wrote got attention? Got widespread attention or impact of the national conversation in some kind of way? Do you remember what it was that you wrote and you remember? Tell me about it.

GAY: It was an essay that’s in “Bad Feminist” called “The Careless Language of Sexual Violence.” A young girl in Cleveland, Texas had been gang raped, and it was a horrific crime. And The New York Times wrote a story about how the town was reeling <laugh>. And I was just like, wait a minute. What? The town? I think the child who dealt with like 20 or 30 assailants, I think perhaps she was reeling a bit more than the town. And I was just incensed. And so I wrote this essay in a matter of hours, and it was published, and it was one of the first pieces I wrote that gained a significant audience. It was published in a magazine called The Rumpus and The New York Times ended up re-reporting the story and putting the focus more appropriately where it belonged on the young girl and the sort of staggering details of this crime. And so that was amazing to me that I could write something from like my little old life. And I was in graduate school at the time, getting my PhD in the middle of nowhere. And still my words reached people well beyond my immediate sphere. It was absolutely unexpected. And when the piece found an audience, and it did contribute to an ongoing conversation about sexual violence and how we write about it, how we talk about it, how we depict it in film and television, you know, that felt bittersweet in that I was sorry that this thing had happened to this child that required this writing. But at the same time, I was glad that we could at least perhaps have a better conversation about the ways in which we talk about sexual violence.

MARTIN: Did that whet your appetite to try to persuade or influence other people through your writing? Because like the impression I got is that some of your writing started out as being for you And a lot of people’s writing is just for them. And I’m just wondering, is there, you know, is there a point at which you write for a purpose other than to clarify your own thinking?

GAY: I primarily still write for myself, and that other people find ways to connect with the work is an added bonus, honestly. And of course, I tend – every time I write something and I send it to an editor, I tell myself, girl, don’t worry. No one’s gonna read it. It is increasingly more difficult <laugh> to believe that, because I do know that there is something of an audience for my work now, but telling myself no one’s gonna read it is what allows me to say what I really want to say on the page for better or worse. And, you know, did it whet my appetite? I mean, there is something wonderful about being read, and I think any writer would admit that if they’re being honest. Yes, you write for yourself, but when what you write for yourself manages to reach other people, it feels great. And I can’t pretend that it doesn’t. It’s wonderful to be at a place in my career where I know that my work will be read. Maybe not by millions, but it’ll be read by at least like one person. And that is great. And I think it lets – makes you feel less alone in the world.

MARTIN: Well, you know, what cracked me up is when you said that you don’t actually have as many opinions as people think that you have. And that you said that people sometimes use you like an opinion vending machine. And I was just wondering, like, how does that work? Is it like at parties where like, like people would, you know, corner a doctor and want people to look at their rash? I mean, is it, is it like that? Like you go to a party –

GAY: It’s exactly like that. Really, you know, you know, most writers, you get to be anonymous. Nobody’s ever gonna know you’re walking down the street. But I am tall, I am fat, I have tattoos. Like, I’m pretty recognizable to people who actually read my work. So I get stopped quite a lot. And when I am, people tend to say, Say, what do you think about… And it could be anything from the New Housewives to what’s happening in Gaza and what, you know, October 7th, someone’s recent news of sexual assault. It’s a range of things, and I understand where that instinct comes from, but sometimes I honestly don’t have an opinion, or I don’t have an opinion that I’m going to share with people that are not my family. And other times it’s just like, oh man, I don’t know. I’m just trying to walk into this opera right now, <laugh>, like, and like sit here for three hours listening to people sing. Like, I just don’t know what to tell you. <Laugh>. So it’s a mixed bag.

MARTIN: Where does that come, you say, you know where that instinct comes from. Where do you think it comes from? Because it’s interesting that, you know, on the one hand, people are interested in your opinion. On the other hand, there are people who will be like, who the hell asked you? You know what I mean? There’s always that. And I’m just wondering, what is it that you think people are seeking and in seeking you out?

GAY: I think that a lot of times what people want is to know that what they think is on the right track. They wanna be affirmed in their point of view. Or they look to my work or to work of other writers like me to help them figure out what they actually do think. And so, you know, I think it’s just a, again, that sense of connection, that sense of guidance. And they may not agree with me, but what I write oftentimes people tell me, helps them arrive to what they believe you know, in one way or another. And so I think a lot of it comes from that. I don’t know that it’s malicious. I, no, I actually know for a fact that it’s not most of the time malicious unless like people are trying to like, catch me in something. Like, oh, you said something else the other day. Yeah, probably I’m human <laugh>. So, you know, when it’s offered in good faith, I try to be as patient as possible.

MARTIN: You also wrote about the fact that you’ve written a lot about black people being killed, about systemic racism, about black people being killed by the police or by, you know, vigilantes and you’ve, you’ve written that you’re tired of it. You’re tired of writing about it. You write, you wrote in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, you wrote, “I write similar things about different black lives lost over and over and over. I tell myself I am done with this subject. Then something so horrific happens that I know I must say something, even though I know that the people who truly need to be moved are immovable.” So say more like, why? I mean, if the idea is to move people, why keep writing about something when you feel like they’re not listening? Who is it for then? Is that for you? Or who is it for?

GAY: I think it’s often for me, because I do, with every new instance of police brutality or extra judicial murder that we learn about, every sort of grave injustice that I’ve written about time and time again, I just think, Again? And clearly words are not gonna stop this. I know that a lot of us who write believe that sort of we’re gonna engender enough empathy through the written word to make everything better. But that’s clearly not gonna happen. But does that mean we don’t say anything at all? You know, that’s where I struggle. Like silence is not gonna make the problem better either. And so there are these instances, like with George Floyd, where, you know, you have this man Derek Chauvin staring at the camera for eight and a half – eight minutes, 44 seconds or something like that, knowing what he was doing, knowing that people were watching him and thinking that he could continue his sort of death spiral with impunity. And it, you know, each sort of new horrific case is so extra horrific. It’s like, how could I not say something? And so it’s this ongoing dilemma, but I also recognize what a luxury it is to be exhausted when really you can’t. I mean, you can feel that way, but you would then have to move on from that because silence, as I said, isn’t gonna solve the problem. I don’t know that writing is gonna solve the problem, but at least when we talk about it, when we bear witness, we make clear this is not okay, this is unacceptable. This man lost his life. And then of course people will be like, but he did this, that, I don’t care. The, you know, like the penance for, for, you know, counterfeit money or whatever is not death. Especially not in Minnesota. Okay. So like, let’s just get some perspective here. Let’s really focus on what matters, which is that no one should take anyone else’s life. And certainly no one in law enforcement should be doing that. And we should be safe. We should be able to walk down the street. We should be able to drive, we should be able to hold a package of Skittles in our own neighborhood without being killed by someone who thinks that they’re doing the world a favor by getting rid of one more black person.

MARTIN: So before we let you go, you know, I’m gonna ask you this one thing ’cause everybody asks, but you, so you know I’m gonna ask. Is there anything you were just wrong about?

GAY: Nope. You know, and the thing is, it’s not that I was wrong about anything. What I say is, and this is what I truly feel, I did the best I could with the skills and the knowledge I had at the time. And if anything, what has happened is that a lot of my opinions have evolved. They’ve gotten more sophisticated, more progressive. Where 10 years ago, I would’ve probably said like, let’s find a way to reform the police. Now I’m like, Hmm, I’m pretty sure they can’t be reformed and we need to figure out something else. And I don’t know what that something else is. I don’t know what that better way of law enforcement is, but you cannot reform something that is so impar irre – that is so irreparably broken. So, you know, it’s more that I’ve just learned more and I’ve hopefully gotten more nuanced in my thinking. But the reason it’s easy to say no I haven’t gotten anything wrong is because so much of what I believe is just women are people. We should have access to reproductive freedom. Police brutality and extra judicial murder are bad. Like, these are not really things that we should be debating, even though clearly we are debating these things. So it’s really that.

MARTIN: Roxane Gay, thank you so much for talking with us.

GAY: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.