Roxane Gay Talks to Lena Dunham About Her New Book, Feminism, and the Benefits of Being Criticized Online

Vulture - 2 October, 2014 - Roxane Gay

Lena Dunham is not that kind of girl, and we know this because she tells us so in the title of her new (and first) book, Not That Kind of Girl. But the title is ironic and not ironic; she is that type of girl, too, and doesn’t really give a shit if you’re onboard with it or not. The writer Roxane Gay, an associate professor of English and creative writing at Purdue University, is and isn’t that kind of girl, too, with a similar undeniable frankness and her own best-selling book of essays also bearing a title with a dual meaning: Bad Feminist. Over the phone from her home in Lafayette, Indiana, regular Vulture contributor Gay spoke for the first time with her New York–based Twitter friend Dunham, and they talked about feminism, diversity, and what can be learned from internet criticism.

Roxane Gay: Hello.
Lena Dunham: Hi. I'm such your crazy fan. I love both your books so much. I can't believe they came out in the same year. And every time I read something about you or by you, I'm just screaming, "Go, go, go!" I'm so psyched! And I can't say enough how grateful I am that you read the book so thoughtfully.

I didn't expect to not love it, but I was surprised by how it was an actual essay collection. Sometimes you read celebrity books and they're more like stand-up routines. That was my biggest fear about writing a book. Either that I would accidentally write one of those, or someone would bully me into writing something that was like, Well, I'm on a TV show, so now I'm writing the requisite book. I have so much respect for the medium, and writers are the biggest celebrities and heroes to me, so the idea of contributing something slack or light to the medium just made me feel pretty nauseous. After there was all the talk around my book deal, my publishers were really supportive of me taking me time, but some people were kind of like, "Don't you want to get that book out there so the talk slows down?" And I was like, "No, I want to make the book as strong as
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