Difficult Women (Gay) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Difficult Women...then take off on your own:

1. What is a difficult woman? How does Roxane Gay describe her...and how do you describe her? What makes a woman "difficult"?

2. Of the various women in her stories, which are your favorites and why? What makes them "difficult"?

3. Talk about the lives Gay's female characters lead, especially their jobs: maids, aerobic instructor, sex workers, engineer. What are those jobs like? Is it the positions/roles/jobs that make women difficult? What other types of jobs or roles would qualify?

4. What experiences have you had in which you might be deemed "difficult"?

5. In "Bone Density," one of the characters says, "We play games because we can and we like it." What kind of games does she refer to, and what does she mean when she says, "Most days these games keep us together, somehow"? Are women more adept at game-playing than men?

6. Talk about the unusual structure in some of Gay's stories, as well as point-of-view shifts, from first to third person. Others stories delve into surrealism, a glass wife, for instance. What, if anything, do those anomalies contribute to the stories? Or perhaps they detract from your reading experience.

7. Brutal things happen to babies in these stories: they're stillborn, abandoned, maimed in a parking lot. Notice, also, the way Gay links violence with sex—which is a long-held literary trope. Want to take a stab at the meaning or significance of all this?

9.  Do any of the characters or events in the stories shock you...appall you...or anger you?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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