Author Roxane Gay is bringing her UK tour to Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall with a show exploring everything from gender politics to reality TV.
The American author is known for her New York Times best-selling book Bad Feminist, an essay collection which explores feminism and racial politics.
Her three-part tour, titled 'Roxane Gay: With One N'', will be the author's first live shows in the UK.
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Visiting Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on Saturday, March 11, Roxane will explore 'politics, patriarchy and Beyoncé', in a show that dissects modern culture.
Ahead of her Liverpool appearance, Roxane spoke to the ECHO about what fans could expect from the show, and offered her thoughts on everything from Love Island to Megxit.
What can people expect from the show?
Well, it depends. In some cities I am doing an on stage conversation and in other cities I will be reading from my work and talking about some new projects and doing an audience Q&A which is my favourite part, where I take questions from the audience and we have what I hope is an interesting conversation. In general my events are a lot of fun and they are very interactive because I never want to be the only one talking at an audience for an hour, which can be… a lot. So we shall see, but I am looking forward to it regardless.
Right now I’m reading from new work that hasn’t been published yet. I’m working on a book of writing advice called How to Be Heard and so it’s really about, in addition to some of the more expected types of writing advice, how do we use our voice to be heard to try to create some sort of change, to not just surrender to apathy and so my conversation will primarily be focused on an essay that is a central part of How to Be Heard.
So this is the bit where I get to skip the queue for my own Q&A and ask you a few questions I’d like to hear your opinions on. I know you’re no stranger to reality TV - are you familiar with Molly-Mae Hague?
She’s on my radar. I know who she is.
Okay, so do you know about the criticism she sometimes gets directed at her about the kind of ‘girl boss’ brand of feminism she is sometimes associated with?
I think a lot of our public conversations about feminism are incredibly shallow and when a woman makes choices we disagree with, when she perhaps has a shallow understanding of feminism, she becomes a very convenient target for anger and frustration and derision. Molly-Mae Hague is 23. I remember who I was at 23 and I said lots of ridiculous things and had a very shallow understanding of almost everything. Because, not that you don’t have anything to offer at 23, but you’re still figuring out who you are. Right now Molly-Mae Hague is taking advantage of her most prominent assets and the kinds of things that understands will help her move through the world.
She is exploiting a patriarchal system that is more than happy to exploit her right back and I think that a lot of what she says and how she frames things as ‘empowerment’ is ridiculous, it’s self-serving. Like, girl, it works for you because you are blonde and petite, and conventionally attractive. If we don’t admit that we are just being ignorant. I am not going to lose my sleep over Molly-bMae Hague, but if she is saying the same nonsense at 30 or 40 or 50 then we know that this is a really fundamental issue and hopefully people can put better books in front of her, to help enrich her understanding of the world. But I think it’s very convenient and very easy to judge young women for their behaviour. She is not the coming of the end times.
I think sometimes the ‘debates’ we have about feminism focus on the choices women make, rather than drilling down into the fact all these choices are still being made under patriarchy.
I just can’t believe that in 2023 we are still having these asinine conversations about ‘is this feminist?’. Who cares? I honestly couldn’t give a damn and I don’t think it’s particularly productive to focus on ‘is XYZ feminist?’ Make all the choices you want, but at some point we do have to hold you accountable for these choices and say ‘you are perhaps not making the best choice possible, not only for yourself but for women more broadly’.
All these little minutiae debates about ‘is this feminist?’ they really just allow us to stay complacent and to not really do some of the more difficult work of feminism, such as - how do we rethink our approaches to power, or our beauty standards. How do we create more space for people to be themselves and not have to conform? But at the same time, how do we learn that certain women want to look or behave a certain way and how do we approach that with less judgement?
I don’t want you to think that all my questions are Love Island themed… but this next one is too. Every season it seems the show starts a conversation around colourism [skin shade prejudice in which people with dark skin experience disadvantages compared with those with lighter skin shades] when it comes to which contestants get chosen to ‘couple up’. Do you think reality TV helps open a public conversation about big topics like racism or sexism in an accessible way, or do you think it just perpetuates these issues?
I think we would all love to believe that reality television is inspiring difficult conversations about colourism and gender, sexuality, other issues of race and ethnicity, religion and so on… and it does, these conversations do actually happen. But unfortunately they only happen amongst people who are media literate and can understand what it is they’re consuming and the kinds of messages that are shaped in what we’re consuming. So, yes, ideally, but I think there are a lot of people who watch these shows and see them as aspirational.
For me, while we deserve a better class of television - and I’m not saying ‘no reality television’ because I’m a fan and I think Love Island is one of God’s greatest creations, but it’s easy for me to say that because I know what I’m consuming. But for young people who think ‘this is how I have to be, this is what it takes to succeed, to be heard and to have visibility’, that’s troubling. Instead of focusing on ‘should this show exist’ or ‘what are the messages’, we should ask ourselves how can we educate people more effectively to understand what they’re consuming but also to put other cultural products into the public sphere that will engender a better conversation. Unfortunately those are not necessarily the kinds of programmes that get attention and production dollars and viewers. It’s challenging and I don’t have any easy answers for how we go about this.
So you’re coming over to the UK from the US. While we share a common language, I think there are a lot more cultural differences between our countries that often get overlooked. I think perhaps this is most apparent in the different reactions to the Harry and Meghan story on both sides of the Atlantic. I’d love to know what you think about the whole situation, and particularly the UK’s reaction to it.
Well. I think that the UK is a monarchy and I have been shocked to see how attached people in the UK are to the monarchy. I always think of the monarchy as something you want to overthrow and, you know, why are this very small group of people given so much cultural power and, more importantly, so much of your tax revenue? And why is that okay? It’s based on nothing. But, man, when I wrote about Harry and Meghan people were like ‘stop telling us what to do!’ and I was like ‘oh my god, it’s just an essay!’ How much power do you think I actually have? People are sometimes attached to systems that don’t serve their best interests and that’s absolutely the same in the United States, it just depends on the system.
I am surprised by how powerful the monarchy remains and I am surprised that so many people don’t recognise how deeply unfair the treatment of Meghan in particular is… and how bad it must have actually been for Harry to leave something as luxurious as the monarchy. I mean, yeah, the castles are probably falling down but they’re still castles. He loved his military appointments and his charity work - I’m actually reading Spare right now. It’s interesting to see how close he is to ‘getting it’ and I would love to see what he writes in five years.
I think Harry is a very smart young man. I think it’s clear he’s just starting to recognise the kinds of questions he should be asking about the culture in which he was raised and so it’s interesting to see glimpses of that and to see that this is truly the world he knows. He seems to be working from a base assumption that it’s not necessarily the world that’s the problem, it’s how he and his wife were treated by the world that’s the problem. And he’s so close.
I have a soft spot for them. I think it must be incredibly traumatic to be a prince - and the most popular prince for that matter - and have your family freeze you out in this way, and also the micro and macro aggressions and the press and that your family won’t be protected and that your wife is being treated the exact same way your mother was treated… it’s breath-taking that they’re willing to make the same mistake twice and risk Meghan Markle’s life after what happened to Diana. It blows my mind. I really wish nothing but the best for Harry and Meghan.
Tickets for Roxane Gay’s Liverpool Philharmonic show are priced between £25 and £35 and can be found via this link.
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