
Not That Bad
Dispatches from Rape Culture
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By:
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Roxane Gay
About this listen
Edited and with an introduction by Roxane Gay, the New York Times best-selling and deeply beloved author of Bad Feminist and Hunger, this anthology of first-person essays read by all 30 contributors, including Gabrielle Union, Ally Sheedy, and Lyz Lenz, tackles rape, assault, and harassment head-on.
*Vogue, “10 of the Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2018”
*Harper’s Bazaar, “10 New Books to Add to Your Reading List in 2018”
*Elle, “21 Books We’re Most Excited to Read in 2018”
*Boston Globe, “25 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018”
*Huffington Post, “60 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018”
*Hello Giggles, “19 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018”
*Buzzfeed, “33 Most Exciting New Books of 2018”
In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and best-selling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are "routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied" for speaking out. Contributions include essays from established and up-and-coming writers, performers, and critics, including actors Ally Sheedy and Gabrielle Union and writers Amy Jo Burns, Lyz Lenz, and Claire Schwartz.
Covering a wide range of topics and experiences, from an exploration of the rape epidemic embedded in the refugee crisis to first-person accounts of child molestation, this collection is often deeply personal and is always unflinchingly honest. Like Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, Not That Bad will resonate with every listener, saying "something in totality that we cannot say alone".
Searing and heartbreakingly candid, this provocative collection both reflects the world we live in and offers a call to arms insisting that "not that bad" must no longer be good enough.
The full list of narrators includes: Roxane Gay, Gabrielle Union, Ally Sheedy, Amy Jo Burns, Lyz Lenz, Claire Schwartz, Aubrey Hirsch, Jill Christman, Lynn Melnick, Brandon Taylor, Emma Smith-Stevens, A.J. McKenna, Lisa Mecham, Vanessa Mártir, xTx, Sophie Mayer, Nora Salem, V.L. Seek, Michelle Chen, Liz Rosema, Anthony Frame, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, Miriam Zoila Pérez, Zoe Medeiros, Sharisse Tracey, Stacey May Fowles, Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes, Meredith Talusan, Nicole Boyce, and Elissa Bassist.
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- Narrated by: Roxane Gay
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined", Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care.
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Dark, thought provoking, sometimes frustrating
- By River Holmes-miller on 06-21-17
By: Roxane Gay
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Difficult Women
- By: Roxane Gay
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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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. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer.
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Solid good writing, but not a great collection
- By Anna H on 07-31-17
By: Roxane Gay
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The Witches Are Coming
- By: Lindy West
- Narrated by: Lindy West
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: This is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times best-selling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill Lindy West turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.
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Starts strong then wanders
- By Dawn on 01-09-20
By: Lindy West
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Notorious RBG
- The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- By: Irin Carmon, Shana Knizhnik
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Nearly a half century into being a feminist and legal pioneer, something funny happened to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The octogenarian won the Internet. Across America, people who weren't even born when Ginsburg made her name are tattooing themselves with her face, setting her famously searing dissents to music, and making viral videos in tribute.
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"The Court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield"
- By Cynthia on 12-13-15
By: Irin Carmon, and others
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10 Things Your Husband Says After He Rapes You
- A conversation about gaslighting, blame-shifting, and consent in marriage.
- By: Jessica Ghigliotti
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Does your heart feel pain while your body feels pleasure? Do you ever watch him get dressed, feeling confused about what just happened? Does the idea of sex come with a wave of guilt, or an uneasy feeling in your gut? Your marriage might be one of the millions missing a very important piece... Let’s sit down and have a talk about your ‘no.” Or rather, what you are likely to hear when your “no” isn’t respected.
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Exposing the Underreported Problem of Partner Sexual Abuse
- By MelBel on 07-08-24
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What a Body Remembers
- A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath
- By: Karen Stefano
- Narrated by: Nicole Poole
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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On a summer night in 1984, 19-year-old UC Berkeley sophomore Karen Thomas leaves her uniformed patrol job at the University of California Police Department and walks home alone in darkness. At the threshold of her apartment a man assaults her at knife point. After a soul chilling struggle she manages to escape and call 911. Police catch her assailant, she identifies him, and he is arrested. Fast forward 2014, 30 years after her assault. Why does the body remember what the mind tries so desperately to forget?
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Not sexually assaulted
- By Dennis Buttera on 07-09-23
By: Karen Stefano
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Ayiti
- By: Roxane Gay
- Narrated by: Roxane Gay
- Length: 2 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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From New York Times best-selling powerhouse Roxane Gay, Ayiti is a powerful collection exploring the Haitian diaspora experience. A married couple seeking boat passage to America prepares to leave their homeland. A young woman procures a voodoo love potion to ensnare a childhood classmate. A mother takes a foreign soldier into her home as a boarder, and into her bed. And a woman conceives a daughter on the bank of a river while fleeing a horrific massacre, a daughter who later moves to America for a new life but is perpetually haunted by the mysterious scent of blood.
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A Glimpse of Real
- By Lovesmuffins2 on 08-18-18
By: Roxane Gay
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Reading Lolita in Tehran
- A Memoir in Books
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Azar Nafisi
- Length: 17 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov.
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A literary critique of Russian lit.
- By Amazon Customer on 04-15-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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Divine Might
- Goddesses in Greek Myth
- By: Natalie Haynes
- Narrated by: Natalie Haynes
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin.
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Natalie Haynes makes me feel cool about being a Greek mythology nerd.
- By Anna E Campbell on 02-15-24
By: Natalie Haynes
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A Place of Our Own
- Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture
- By: June Thomas
- Narrated by: June Thomas
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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For as long as queer women have existed, they’ve created gathering grounds where they can be themselves. From the intimate darkness of the lesbian bar to the sweaty camaraderie of the softball field, these spaces aren’t a luxury—they’re a necessity for queer women defining their identities. In A Place of Our Own, journalist June Thomas invites listeners into six iconic lesbian spaces over the course of the last sixty years, including the rural commune, the sex toy boutique, the vacation spot, and the feminist bookstore.
By: June Thomas
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She Said
- Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
- By: Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman, Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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On October 5, 2017, the New York Times published an article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey - and then the world changed. For months, Kantor and Twohey had been having confidential discussions with top actresses, former Weinstein employees, and other sources, learning of disturbing long-buried allegations. But nothing could have prepared them for what followed the publication of their Weinstein story. With superlative detail, insight, and journalistic expertise, Kantor and Twohey take us for the first time into the very heart of this social shift.
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Great until the Kavanaugh tangent
- By JC on 09-14-19
By: Jodi Kantor, and others
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This Thread of Gold
- A Celebration of Black Womanhood
- By: Catherine Joy White
- Narrated by: Catherine Joy White
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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This immersive and empowering book blends history, reporting, and personal stories to weave a gorgeous tapestry from the resilience of Black women. As White writes, “Black women are not victims. Black women are alchemists, spinning gold from a life of hardship. . . . This book is dedicated solely to Black women surviving, thriving, and glowing.” White’s book features revolutionary women from across time and space, liberating them from reductive stereotypes like “the strong Black woman,” and allowing space for emotional nuance, individual motivation, and richness of expression.
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I’m Sorry for My Loss
- An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America
- By: Rebecca Little, Colleen Long
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Rebecca Little and Colleen Long, childhood friends who grew up to be journalists, both experienced late-term loss, and together they take an incisive, deeply reported look at the issue, working to shatter taboos that have made so many pregnant people feel ashamed and alone.
By: Rebecca Little, and others
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I Never Called It Rape - Updated Edition
- The Ms. Report on Recognizing, Fighting, and Surviving Date and Acquaintance Rape
- By: Robin Warshaw
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Gloria Steinem, Wheatley Tanner Letters LLC
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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A new edition of the 1988 classic text that exposed the extreme prevalence of rape in America, coining the term "acquaintance rape" and establishing the disturbing statistics on sexual assault that still hold just as true today - now featuring an original preface from Gloria Steinem, a new introduction by Salamishah Tillet, an updated afterword by Mary P. Koss, PhD, as well as an updated resources section.
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Wish I skipped right by this one
- By Windsorsmith9 on 02-04-22
By: Robin Warshaw
What listeners say about Not That Bad
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- Mombarre
- 06-23-20
Shakes you to the core
If you ever wondered how a rape survivor feels and deals with it, here it is laid out in gut wrenching , searing honest essays from survivors. I am sure these stories will stay with me for years to come and for that i commend author for coming up with this anthology.
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- brooke k olson
- 03-10-23
Good book!
Definitely could be triggering to some but content is needed and necessary. This book is very important.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Connie VanMeter
- 03-15-19
Glimpse into the reality of rape.
This book grabs you by your heart and never lets go until you’re done. I would recommend this to everyone in our society.
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- Libby
- 03-31-21
painful but important
I'm thankful for the authors for sharing their stories to drive awareness of different forms in which sexual violence and abuse can manifest. there's a great range of writing here. some authors share detail, others approach their stories with more restraint, all of them are poetic in their own way. all of them shed light on the complex journey of healing. I think this book will help listeners be able to engage with survivors with more appropriate sensitivity and empathy.
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- Kathryn
- 04-30-19
Enlightening, essential
In spite of dark subject matter, or because of it, this is a crucial read.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 10-03-18
For thinking
While I didn't agree with everything, felt like I needed to learn more about some of the ideas, and it made me stop and really think about some ways we all contribute to rape culture, no matter how enlightened or feminist we feel.
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- Cynthia
- 09-20-18
STELLAR COMPILATION!!
Every woman should have this on their bookshelf! the words of these women and men shine brightly. They shine a light on a very serious and much more diverse issue than I ever imagined.
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- Lynette K. Ackman
- 05-09-22
Wonderful
I highly recommend “Not that bad”. It was not as painful to listen to as I expected… it was sad, but also felt healing…. And obviously, important.
I’ve never been raped. I’ve been sexually assaulted (more than once) and I think any woman is a victim of “rape culture”, even if they don’t see or admit it. So having never been raped, have never been forced at gun point or knife point, my experiences were “not that bad”…. Yet, bad.
These essays pulled at heartstrings, and yet wrapped me in the warmth of community and understanding. Why should women be grateful we weren’t killed, it wasn’t worse than it was… why should we avoid wearing something sexy or walk at night out of fear and victim blaming?
I feel torn between buying a copy for every young woman (college, high school, middle school, grade school…) and wishing they’d never have to find out or know.
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- Janelle
- 05-29-18
tough but necessary
I hate that books like this have to exist but I'm grateful that this one does. All of the essays were powerful but the last one will stay with me forever and should be required reading for all high school aged kids, who should read it again while at university and then again post college and at least twice a year after that.
I also appreciated Roxane's explanation of "not that bad" I've often said this to myself and other women...I am ashamed of this fact. thank you for highlighting why it is all that bad.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Nichole
- 09-03-19
very enlightening
this book is for everyone. men, women, old and young should listen to it and discuss it.
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